the shebangs

I have a favorite joke from The Simpsons that I think about a lot. I have been meaning to share it here, but it never seemed to fit with what I was writing at the time, so I didn't. But, I'd like to share it now.

For those who don't want to click and watch: the one-sentence joke exists in a news report on television in the show. Kent Brockman, a newscaster, walks outside of a dilapidated, closed casino and addresses the camera:

Kent Brockman: Gone are such headliners as Little Timmy and the Shebangs, The Shebangs, and The New Shebangs featuring Big Timmy.

What. A. Journey. That single sentence suggests an entire story, highlighting all three acts of this band's musical career. First, there's the band at its conception. Then, a rift: for some reason Little Timmy leaves the band. Maybe he tried to go at it solo or maybe the band was tired of him. Then, he comes crawling back, but he's no longer little. He's big now, past his prime, maybe unhealthy. Maybe he had a hard life. Maybe going solo didn't go so well. But he's back, he's just no longer the lead, the headliner, as he was at the onset.

And, what a perfectly crafted joke. I can imagine this joke being pitched after the script was written, during a punch-up session, and the other writers cracking up. It's so funny, and so solid. Think of anything that they could have had Kent Brockman say there, think of the blank box beneath his name, and try and beat that. It is an original joke, relying on no pop-culture reference, on nothing crude. It's a magic trick to make something funny out of nothing.

The joke sticks with me even after I'm done laughing because I can relate to the truth at the heart of the joke. I think that that is because there are chapters to a creative career. There are ups, small victories and large ones, but also downs, rejection's shadow is never far off. I spent 2025 writing as best I could, even writing two screenplays when I was already convinced that cinema was, if not dead, dying.

2026 will be different for me. As of now, I will likely dabble in short fiction in my personal work. I want to keep looking at stuff closely, inspecting people, places, and things the way that Italo Calvino did back in the 1960s. I worry that AI and LLMs will get better and better at using words and images to tell us entertaining tales (while remaining stagnant in other, more beneficial, areas). But, I don't think it will ever fully capture what it is like to be human in its writing. It can't, by design. Though I believe that, I think most audiences will care less and less where what they watch or read comes from and fewer human stories will be told as a result.

One of the books I recommend most is Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino because it is a deep-dive into what it means to be an individual on this planet, in a world where sensory overload is the one constant. It was originally published in 1983, the year I was born. Reading it in this day and age, it's amazing how prescient it is, was, will continue to be. It's a uniquely revelatory short book about human thinking, human behavior, existence, and modernity. There's almost no way to find a paragraph within that sums up what it is. Believe me, I've tried. So I will share what the back cover writes about the material, as it (almost) makes clear what's inside:

Mr. Palomar, whose name purposely evokes that of a famous telescope, is a questor after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. Alone, his cosmic perspective on the ordinary balances between the comedic present and the eternal void. Palomar, whether contemplating a cheese, a woman's breasts, or a gorilla's behavior, brings us a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual perception. Palomar's preference for interior dialogues and infinite spaces is constantly intruded upon by the civilized "I," a crusty, charming gentleman who fails as a telescope but delights as a man.

This book rewired my brain when I first read it. So many chapters, The Sword of the Sun, The Cheese Museum, The Sand Garden, etc., made sense philosophically in ways that philosophers use thousands of words to explain. All of Calvino's writing in this work has a way of doing that, which is why I recommend it.

The image on the front cover does a good enough job of highlighting man's inability to see past the surface of things, despite what the reward might be for doing so. The main character, Mr. Palomar, does his best to try and see, and think, beyond what's right in front of him, but it's hard. I know it is. You probably do, too.

indoor animal was a way to try and share what shaped my thinking up to this point in my life, to showcase what I felt was worthwhile in a world of content, because as I said in a previous newsletter, "Garbage in, garbage out." I strongly believe that what we watch and read shapes what we say and do. How we look at things is influenced by what we've already looked at it. It's that one psychology test where they say to look around the room for a minute and to take in all the blue items in the room. Then, they have you close your eyes. Then, they ask you to list the yellow items in the room. And you can't. It's impossible. That's the point. What you focus on is what you see, in everything, sometimes even when it isn't there. What I recommended in this newsletter in the year 2025 reflects where I was mentally and emotionally this year. No two people are ever moving lockstep in the exact same place at the exact same moment in the exact same direction mentally and emotionally. Ever.

I'm not feeling burnt out, or running out of things I want to talk about, but it is hard to try and be entertaining consistently on the schedule I chose for myself. It's been fun to dig through my memory, my bookshelves, my journals to find what to discuss here. I still plan to send out a newsletter again with some regularity, I just don't know what that is yet. I will be retooling indoor animal in the new year. Maybe it'll be a once-a-month thing, or an every-so-often thing, we shall see. The simplest way to say this, I guess, is that Little Timmy is leaving The Shebangs. For now.

What I just tried to say as poetically as I possibly could was said (oh so much) better by art curator Sarah Urist Green as she ended The Art Assignment (which I was always a fan of). So I will leave that here, too. Just imagine me saying it.

indoor animal was curated by a human: Tim Papciak. On Mondays, he shared one link to one music video to help spark creativity in himself and in other creative types. On Thursdays, he recommended a book, movie, show, art piece, or link to some dusty corner of the internet that he believes either 1.) added to the human experience, or 2.) served as a coping mechanism in the year 2025. Note: this was not, and was never meant to be, self-help content. Now, it is 2026 and Tim is rethinking what indoor animal is...