What’s on my junk shelf? — Casper Kelly

What’s in my … ? issue #132

Casper Kelly is a writer and director of TV and movies including Too Many Cooks, Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, Archer, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and the Cheddar Goblin section of “Mandy.” He also wrote the short story collection “More Stories about Spaceships and Cancer.” He’s on Twitter at @heycasperkelly.

I have a built in shelf in my home office that I haven’t organized yet. In addition to part of my wife’s Martha Stewart magazine collection that I have yet to move to her home office and my burgeoning blu ray collection (that I’ve stopped adding to until I make my own movie) there is a bunch of things special to me including childhood things I hadn’t thought about in ages until my parents recently downsized and foisted it on me. I don’t really mind that the shelf is junky. I am certainly more of an Oscar than a Felix (vis a vis The Odd Couple) in the neatness department and who wouldn’t want to be like Walter Matthau?

On the lower left is the book of the artist Edward Kienholz who exposed me to the concept of art installations — so great! There’s nothing like being INSIDE an art piece to feel moved. Look him up here — he would buy out apartments before they were torn down and recreate them as art installations with sad people living inside. He also did a piece with a pistol set off to fire once randomly in the next 1000 years and you could sit in a chair the gun is pointing at and contemplate your fragility! But I digress.

Star Wars plaque and landline phone from Too Many Cooks

Star Wars plaque. As a tiny child I had some cool neighbors from New Jersey. I think they were the Bush’s. In addition to having cool accents (to my southern ear) and exposing us to the recipe for something called Italian Chop Suey they made me this amazing Star Wars plaque by shellacking a carefully cut out oversized comic book page onto stained wood. I love this so much, including the old school soda pop top used as the hook. People were resourceful back then! It is above the phone from Too Many Cooks which although not connected to an actual landline also makes me happy.

Old school soda pop top used as the hook

“Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell” Russian nesting dolls

Assorted desk figures. The TV network Adult Swim made Russian nesting dolls for my show “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell” and I love it so much. I wish I had nesting dolls for every project I work on. Should be standard. I don’t know if this is the company that did them but here’s a company that does custom nesting dolls.

Assorted desk figures

Middle school silk screen. This was inspired by Frank Frazetta’s “Death Dealer” using a silk screen process in my school’s art class. This was 100 percent sincere with no ironic or tongue in cheek layer. My art teacher sure hated this but I still love it. Middle school angst incarnate! I should probably frame it but I’m not sure I want to think of Middle school angst that often. Also I am running out of wall space.

Middle school silk screen

Art piece from my 20s. I started doing art after work just for fun. No agenda. I can actually draw a little better than this but I like the looseness and I left the pencil lines in on purpose. I call this “Man vaguely resembling Kurt Vonnegut peruses the paper on a lazy Sunday while his neighbor watches a movie containing brief nudity.” This makes me want to get back into making art.

Art piece from my 20s

Nylon Hand Truck

Light dolly

Every household garage and homestead needs a hand truck. It’s amazing how often you’ll use it once you have one. Makes heavy and awkward things seem less so. I’ve hauled all kinds of weird stuff. Big tires can work outside in the yard, too. And you’ll be a hero next time a friend needs to move. “Be sure to bring your hand truck,” they say.

The truck I settled on is a lightweight yet tough nylon model made by Harper, but I don’t think the make matters much. (There is a similar one from Gleason.) Since it weighs only 22 pounds it’s easy to toss in the trunk, yet it will handle weights greater than I can move (600 pounds). It has big fat balloon tires, stair glides (to ease going up or downstairs), and is just about indestructible.

You can get a cheap new metal one for $20. Since they are hard to kill, a hand truck is a great candidate for buying used.

(This is a Cool Tools Favorite from 2006 — editors)

Nine years of Cool Tools Gift Guides

A compilation of our favorite gift suggestions

For the past nine years, we’ve released a series of holiday gift guides. The selections are, for the most part, timeless. Here they are:

2021 Gift Guide

2020 Gift Guide

2019 Gift Guide

2018 Gift Guide

2017 Gift Guide

2016 Gift Guide

2015 Gift Guide

2014 Gift Guide

2013 Gift Guide

12ft.io/Life Pie/Productive meetings

Recomendo: issue no. 282

Bypass almost any paywall
If a website allows Google to crawl its articles, it shouldn’t then hide its articles behind a paywall. The website 12ft.io bypasses paywalls by displaying the Google cache of articles. You can either go to the 12ft site and enter the URL of a paywalled article or prepend 12ft.io/ to the URL of any paywalled page — MF

How to do a Life Pie
The Six Spokes Theory, described here as a “strategy for an optimal life” is a great way to draw out a snapshot of your life and see what areas might need more attention. This is also called a Life Pie, which I first read about in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. You start by drawing a circle and dividing it into 6 slices. Each slice is assigned to an aspect of your life. You then draw a dot on the dividing line to the degree that you feel fulfilled. After connecting the dots, you’ll be able to spot in what areas you are lopsided. I made a short YouTube video outlining my process here. — CD

Productive meetings
This 1-minute video by John Cleese is all you need to know about how to have productive (vs unproductive) meetings. One minute! Applies to zoom meetings, too.  — KK

What books redditors are reading
Someone processed billions of comments to find the books most mentioned on reddit, and I am very grateful. Here are the most mentioned books in 2021 — the top one being “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” They are also grouped by subreddit which is super helpful. — CD

Roasted sesame seeds are the universal topping
I love these Roasted White Sesame Seeds by Shirakiku. There’s no salt or any other ingredient. Everything tastes better with a generous shake of the container – scrambled eggs, salads, ice cream, blueberries. Sometimes I’ll have a spoonful of the plain seeds as a snack. — MF

Smart grammar assistant
Grammarly is a super grammar helper that is much smarter than the default ones in most applications. I use it all the time. I’ve quickly come to depend on its artificial intelligence to improve my grammar and find more than the obvious typos. It seems context aware. And it runs at the OS level, so it works in most apps such as Slack, email, Discord, Evernote, Twitter, Facebook, etc. (It does not work in Google Docs for me.) Right now the basic model is free. — KK

2021 Holiday Gift Guide: Mark’s Picks

Mark's holiday picks

Like many people, this year I spent a lot of time at home with my family, and so we cooked, played games, and spent time in the backyard more than we did in previous years. Here are a few things that make home living more enjoyable and would make great gifts.

Tangkula 15 Ft Patio Double-Sided Umbrella with Base

A long umbrella that covers all our patio furniture and doesn’t require moving as the sun moves across the sky. A crank handle makes it easy to open and close. It comes with empty canvas bags to fill with sand and place in the base to keep it from blowing over in the wind.

Zavor LUX Edge, 8 Quart Programmable Electric Multi-Cooker

If you don’t have a multi-cooker, I highly recommend getting one. They are electric pressure cooker/slow cooker/rice cookers.  I use mine almost every day to make soup, curries, chili, and pasta sauce. The Instant Pot multi-cooker is more popular, but I prefer the Zavor because it heats up more quickly than my old Instant Pot. Good Housekeeping compared a Zavor (back when it used to be called Fagor) to an Instant Pot and said: ” In our lab tests, Fagor came up to pressure a whopping 15 minutes faster than the Instant Pot, which means you’d get dinner on the table that much sooner.” Other than that, there isn’t a big difference.

Toshiba 43-inch Smart 4K Fire TV

When our old TV conked out, I was surprised to find out how much cheaper, thinner, bigger, and smarter TV had gotten in the last ten years. This 43-inch Toshiba was much cheaper than the old Sony we had, and it has a 4K screen plus built-in Amazon fire, which gives us access to all our streaming subscriptions: HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crunchy Roll, and Funimation (gulp, we sure watch a lot of TV).

Want more? For the past nine years, we’ve released a series of holiday gift guides. The selections are, for the most part, timeless. See them all here.

Meredith Arthur, Founder of Beautiful Voyager

Cool Tools Show 308: Meredith Arthur

Our guest this week is Meredith Arthur. In 2015, after working at a string of startups, Meredith created the website and podcast Beautiful Voyager for overthinkers, perfectionists, and people pleasers. At Pinterest, where she is a Content Design Lead, Meredith focuses on emotional wellbeing innovation. She’s also the author of Get Out of My Head. You can find Meredith on YouTube, and on Instagram @beyova and on Twitter @mudaba.

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Show notes:

Migun Therapy Bed
This is just such an unusual thing that I happened upon. I had a friend of the family who has scoliosis and she found out about Migun bed, which was originally created in South Korea, but is available all over the world. And it’s basically a massage table that you have at your house. Kind of like when you’re in the airport and you see those chairs that give you a massage, this is a flat table that does the same. And it combines infrared heating with Jade balls that roll up and down your back neck and legs. And it’s amazing by the way. You can buy it at a Migun store or online, but you can also look for used Migun beds. New ones I believe are around $2,500. And I found a gently used one. I live in the bay area, so there are people here who are often looking for, and buying the latest of everything. So I managed to find a used one for $250, and I sent my husband out with a truck to go get it, and bring it home. And that was an incredible deal. I have had to do some maintenance on it. The amazing thing about this Migun bed manufacturer here in the United States is they are extremely helpful. I’ve called, I’ve done maintenance numerous times. They’ve responded. They told me exactly what to do. So that was great too. It’s really changed my life. I do it every day. And as a chronic pain sufferer, it’s a really incredible tool.

Weighted blanket
The weighted blanket. This really is an amazing thing that was originally developed for kids who had sensory disorders, or other autism spectrum. And what everyone found was, well, it works for all of us. Now, I have an anxiety disorder, so I might be even more oriented towards this, but I’ve seen all different types of people who, the weighted blanket works for. Not everyone likes it. Some people feel claustrophobic, but if you’re someone that responds to that feeling of weight, weighted blanket is for you. We currently have three at our house. And they each have different mechanisms of weight. Some of them are pellets, almost like plastic pellets. I don’t recommend that because if you have an animal they can rip it and then the pellets come out and that’s no fun. Glass beads are pretty great, much cleaner if you do have a rip. And then there is a weighted blanket that’s super were popular that’s just a very heavy cotton that’s laced with some sort of weight mechanism. There’s also many styles. It kind of looks like a quilted blanket with little squares of quilting. And then inside of those are the weights. They say you’re supposed to do 10% of your body weight. So 200 pounds, you’d get a 20 pound one. I sleep under it every night. My husband can’t believe it. He calls it the cave in. He has no interest in this. He has a very different disposition than I do. But when I go in, it’s sort of just on my side of the bed. And so it’s sort of half of our bed in width, and I try to keep it flattened out. It doesn’t move around a lot. I can stick one leg out, but you’re not flipping when you have the weighted blanket on you. There’s a feeling that you really are covered and it’s time to relax.

The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner
This was originally published in 1998, called The Culture of Fear. And its subtitle is Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things. This was the original book that had a foundational effect on how I evaluated danger. And as someone who has an anxiety disorder, I am oriented into worrying about things or thinking that there could be danger where there isn’t. My amygdala is kicking at all times. So this book helped me frame what is really happening. How statistics work. How does it work being on an airplane versus driving a car? Why did we have the Satanic panic? Why are we so worried about our kids walking to the store? And what role does media play? To sort of see behind the curtain of the narratives that are out there and learn how to evaluate risk. I have an 11 year old daughter, and I see this with a lot of her friends and their parent and her friend’s parents are scared to have their kids ever be out of their sight, not have tracking devices on them, not know where are at all times. And when you start to see the genuine numbers around kidnappings, and how truly rare it is for a child to be kidnapped by a stranger — it’s under 300 people a year. I think it was. I should double check that, but the number is very small. It’s definitely under a thousand kids a year in all of America. And you start to understand what that stat looks like and what that means. And even in those circumstances, there are lots of varied elements within that number. You start to realize like, hey, what is the risk of not allowing your kid to grow their own sense of independence, and to grow their own sense of evaluating their own risk? Bringing consciousness to the things that I fear, and being intentional about pushing back using data has been formative for me.

Two Dots puzzle app
This app is called the Two Dots puzzle game. I work with a lot of designers at Pinterest, and one of the designers mentioned that this was beautifully designed. And so when I first downloaded it, I was appreciating the attention to detail, and the design that went into this puzzle app. And I’ve always loved jigsaw puzzles, beating projects, anything that I can sort of do with my hands while still having a conversation with someone else, that’s sort of how I’m oriented anyway. And I really started to love this game. It is in the world of Candy Crush, but it’s certainly not Candy Crush in that you are basically learning these different little skills within the app. And you’re moving up the ladder and you’re moving through different, levels of the game. I’ve learned recently that there are different kinds of distractions that we can use as an emotional regulation tactic. And for a lot of people that could be eating a pint of ice cream, or drinking, having a few cocktails, or going for a walk, or going for a run. We all have these different distraction strategies. Two Dots is my distraction activity. And it’s one that doesn’t have too negative of an outcome for me. So, it’s something that I can do that doesn’t have me eating food that will have sugar. I would describe it as a positive distraction if you’re oriented that way. If you’re somebody who wants to just relax and sort of take your mind off of something in order to transition, this is what I recommend.

About Get Out of My Head: Inspiration for Overthinkers in an Anxious World:

This book was many years in the making. It is a compilation of all of the different strategies for overthinkers. So if you are someone who may be prone to rumination or thinking to the point where you have effects in your body, which is me, what are some things that we can do to help ourselves? And how can we reframe anxiety in a way that encourages creativity, and excitement, and curiosity, which is how I feel about these topics. I did it in conjunction with the artist, Leah Rosenberg, who was the former director of the Color Factory in New York. Who is an amazing artist who works with color and emotion and who describes color as a multivitamin that you take every day to help you feel better. And so a lot of it is filled with ideas, like catch phrases. My catch phrase is “Protect the head,” which means that when I evaluate an idea, should I do this, or should I not do this? I think, okay, am I protecting the head through my decision? Am I doing this with the longer term consequences in mind, or am I just saying yes? “Protect the head” is a catchphrase that helps me come back to good decision making. The book is basically filled with ideas like that.

What’s on my junk shelf? — Casper Kelly