Should You Gift Adam Savage Items at Conventions?

0:00 You're coming to Australia in June.

0:02 Would you rather fans not give you items at the convention?

0:08 Yeah.

0:08 You know, it's you bring up a reasonable

0:10 and interesting question and I want to say like, okay, so I was there in DC.

0:15 I got so many wonderful things.

0:16 I got some Blackwing pencils from a fan.

0:19 I've got um oh my gosh, one fan um they had this closure that was

0:25 like a cast brass replica of an original and what they gave me was the first

0:31 time they succeeded at single point threading.

0:34 I'm honored to hold on to this.

0:36 I'm just going to show you a few of the highlights.

0:39 That's not anything.

0:40 Ah, someone gave me their Mythos uh guitar pedal.

0:46 Yeah, I'm I'll figure out what those sounds do.

0:51 I'll put it I've got an electric guitar over at the office.

0:54 Um, amazing.

0:55 Uh, lots of challenge coins.

0:57 Um, some Hawaiian lay beads.

1:01 Look, everyone that comes to the table is so gracious and so lovely.

1:06 Um, I can't wait to see you guys in Steel City.

1:10 Um, so to the question.

1:12 Oh, right, right, right.

1:13 I haven't even answered Xava's question.

1:15 Um, look, stuff like that, stuff, small stuff.

1:19 I totally make accommodations.

1:22 I underpack my luggage when heading to a con.

1:24 And when going to Australia, since I'm doing two cons over two weeks, um,

1:29 I'm not going to bring a whole extra suitcase,

1:31 but I will bring a little extra space.

1:33 But let's be realistic.

1:34 If you bring me a big frame picture,

1:36 that that that's going to be really difficult for me to fly back with.

1:40 But again, you know, we actually travel with an address, a post office box.

1:44 So that you can um oh the we we we travel with cards so that when people

1:53 have something that might be too big we say

1:55 you can here's the shipping address to ship it.

1:57 Um and actually Ryan Peek has a con related question.

2:01 Is there any specific con etiquette that is good to pass along?

2:05 You're taking they're taking their nephew to his first con

2:09 this coming weekend and they can't wait to experience it with him.

2:12 Okay.

2:13 Um, the rules around a con are around respect.

2:18 Uh, if you see someone whose costume you liked,

2:22 if you see someone whose costume you like,

2:24 um, the ethos is that you walk up to them and say, "I really like your costume.

2:28 Can I take a picture?" And you let them get into their pose.

2:34 They might pose with your kid or your nephew, right?

2:37 They'll have a whole thing worked out, very likely.

2:40 Uh, but don't just go around snapping pictures.

2:43 Snapping pictures is fine, you know, of of Zakana and stuff like that.

2:46 When you have a costume you really want to photograph, go up and ask them.

2:48 Go up and tell them you're gonna photograph it.

2:50 Um, beyond that, you know,

2:52 don't touch people who can't see that you're about to touch them,

2:55 you know, get in front of them, that kind of thing.

2:57 Um, and it's like the best part about a con is

3:02 that it's a sharing economy in all at all the levels, right?

3:08 So there's just very little gatekeeping.

3:11 If your nephew sees a costume that they want to make

3:16 and you see someone else wearing one that's like it,

3:19 a great question would be, "Hey, here's my nephew.

3:22 Where would he get started on this?" Uh

3:25 because when you have worked through a costume,

3:27 you know, Superman or a Stormtrooper or whatever,

3:31 you have labored over every inch of the thing.

3:33 you know it really intimately and then you understand the like

3:36 the landscape of other versions of that costume that are out there.

3:39 Um don't I I'm not you it's not like

3:48 there's a lot of people violating etiquette all the time.

3:52 Yes, that certainly can be a problem.

3:54 Cosplay does not equal consent.

3:56 Um this is a phrase that came up a bunch of years ago at a con.

4:01 uh you know if somebody is dressed in a scantily

4:05 clad thing that is not an invitation to touch them.

4:08 Uh those sorts of things have to be spelled out

4:11 on the occasion but that's not information your nephew needs.

4:14 Um okay I want to move on to this question

4:18 which I really dig and it is from KV2049.

4:24 Uh they said a few years ago when I was newish to test

4:26 it you talked about a Narnia sword that had been built by Weta.

4:29 It baffled me that the per people who

4:31 worked on Middle Earth also worked on Narnia,

4:33 but of course it makes sense in hindsight.

4:35 What are other connections that people

4:37 outside the film industry might not suspect?

4:40 Um, I tell you one thing is like we lost a really amazing human in Bob Burns.

4:51 Um, and he had Bob Burns is sort of industry legend.

4:57 Uh when I was a kid, there was a show called The Real Ghostbusters,

5:01 which had nothing to do with the movie Ghostbusters.

5:04 Uh but it involved a gorilla in an office reading newspaper.

5:08 That was Bob Burns famously.

5:10 But Bob also had this workshop where young filmmakers would come to play.

5:14 Um, and these young filmmakers were people

5:17 like George Lucas and James Cameron and uh

5:20 uh uh uh um um George Lucas's effects director uh uh uh the really tall one.

5:29 I can't believe I'm drawing a blank on this right now.

5:31 I know you're all yelling it at the screen right now.

5:34 Um eight Academy Awards.

5:37 Dennis Mirren.

5:37 What's that?

5:38 Dennis Mirren.

5:38 Yeah, Dennis Mirren.

5:39 That's I know.

5:40 It's like it's so obvious.

5:41 How could you not remember Dennis Mirren?

5:42 So Lucas, Dennis Mir and Peter Jackson, Jim Cameron,

5:45 these guys would all go to Bob Burns shop and like make models together.

5:49 But the one I wanted to tell you about was uh uh

5:52 um if you're a Simpsons fan and you've watched the old seasons,

5:57 you've probably come across an amazing voice actor

6:00 who played the among many many many characters, he played Troy Mccclure.

6:05 Uh on Futurama, he played Zack Brandan.

6:08 Um, his name was Phil Hartman and he was a Saturday Night Live alum uh,

6:14 and a absolutely genius, brilliant vocal, physical comedian.

6:20 What you don't know is that in the 70s,

6:23 Phil Hartman was a really important album designer, album cover designer.

6:29 the the the it's hard to overstate how important the 12ish square

6:37 inch area of a record album really was uh at its peak.

6:44 But this was this was a major cultural frame.

6:48 People did all sorts of amazing stuff with that frame and they pushed

6:52 it and they pulled it and they changed what people thought of graphic design.

6:55 And Phil Hartman was one of those doing

6:57 albums for like Jefferson Starship and things like that.

7:00 So I always love I always love obviously possessing

7:03 a very strange and parapotetic career that has wound a lot.

7:07 I'm a big fan of those careers that have

7:10 wrinkles and uh buckles to them that I didn't expect.

7:14 Um, and within the frame of graphic design,

7:19 within the frame of graphic design, I was recently looking at, well,

7:23 actually, I was recently going down a YouTube

7:25 rabbit hole listening to Karen Carpenter singing.

7:27 I found a sound engineer who had two recordings

7:30 of Karen Carpenter singing a song four years apart, and he overlaid them.

7:34 And for many of the notes, you cannot hear two voices.

7:38 That's how tightly Karen Carpenter would hit the perfect note.

7:44 But then I was also noticing the Carpenters logo.

7:46 And if you haven't seen it,

7:47 the Carpenters had this amazing amazing graphic design logo.

7:51 And this is like this is like the soul of the 70s,

7:54 60s, and 50s where logo types were not just like this was handone.

8:00 This isn't Letet.

8:01 This is somebody who like worked this out, designed it, cut it out,

8:05 came up with a with a framework for it, and built it.

8:08 And I'll tell you who this was.

8:09 So, I was looking at this and thinking,

8:11 "God, I love typographic design like this.

8:13 This is really this is hard stuff to do.

8:16 It is really impressive." And I thought, "Well,

8:18 who did it?" And I looked him up and his name

8:21 is actually a really important album designer called Craig Braun.

8:25 And his uh graphic design company.

8:28 Oh, and by the way, so Craig Braun designed this with um hang on.

8:36 Uh Walter, the illustrator Walter Vez and Nicholas Braun,

8:39 sorry, Craig Bronn uh both designed this logo.

8:42 And he also went on Braun Associates did Sticky Fingers, the the the zipper,

8:47 the Rolling Stones album with the the fly,

8:49 you could open the tongue, uh the Andy Warhol banana, like crazy.

8:55 I had no idea that the person who designed the Carpenters logo did that.

8:58 But I think I've already given off the surprise

9:00 because Craig Braraw is actually the father of Nicholas Brawn,

9:04 otherwise known as Cousin Greg from Succession.

9:09 I love that.

9:10 It also turns out that Craig Braun went on in his later life.

9:13 I I I don't think he's dead,

9:15 but he went on in his later career and also became an actor.

9:18 Again, marvelous weird careers.

9:21 Um, I really dig that.

9:25 Thank you for watching.

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