Episode 29 Guess What??

Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. This week: Q&As, ferry rides, and sick beats!

If you like what you hear and want to support the New York Neo-Futurists, subscribe to the show, consider making a donation at nynf.org, and join our Patreon. Patreon membership gives you access to bonus content like video plays! We’d really appreciate any support in these difficult times. Contributing to our Patreon helps us continue to pay our artists. 

Take care of yourself, get your feet in the air, and share it with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

1:44 - Go ahead ask (abridged) with Yolanda & Rob on the phone: Part I by Yolanda Kae Wilkinson and Rob Neill

6:05 - American Journey (Vashon Island 2017) by Topher Lin featuring Angela Hsu and Jeff

9:28 - HEY JOEY, GUESS WHAT? I LEARNED TO USE GARAGE BAND! by Ezra Reaves featuring Joey Rizzolo, recorded in 2016

Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay

Our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean

The music and sound for Topher's play were designed by Jessie Alsop

Joey Rizzolo designed and mixed the audio for Ezra's play. Thanks, Joey!

Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Julia Melfi, and Léah Miller

Take Care!

Transcript 

Episode 29 Guess What??

Show Intro

Fun syncopated electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Julia: 29. Guess What?? Hi, I’m Julia Melfi—a New York Neo-Futurist. While our on-going, ever-changing, late-night show, The Infinite Wrench, is on hold for the foreseeable future, we wanted a place to keep making art for you. And thus, Hit Play was born!  

If you’re already a fan of The New York Neo-Futurists, or any of our sibling companies, hi! We can’t wait to go swim in your cousin's pool or something cool like that with you. If this is totally new to you—welcome to it!

We play by four rules: We are who we are, we’re doing what we’re doing, we are where we are, and the time is now. Simply put: we tell stories, and those stories are our own. Everything that you hear is actually happening. So if we tell you we're recording this unnecessarily long sentence in just one single breath, we, in point of fact, are recording this unnecessarily long sentence in just one single breath because we are doing what we are doing, like I am right now. 

Julia takes a breath

Julia: And now, Rob will Run the Numbers!

Rob: Hey, I’m Rob, a New York Neo-Futurist. 

In this episode we are bringing you 3 plays. The first is by Yolanda Kae Wilkinson and me, Rob Neill. The second is from the San Francisco Neo-Futurists with Topher Lin, Angela Hsu, and Jeff, music and sound design by Jessie Alsop. And the last play is from the vault by Ezra Reaves featuring Joey Rizzolo, recorded back in 2016. 

That brings us to 118 audio experiments on Hit Play. Go ahead. Enjoy!

Music winds down.

Play 1: Go ahead ask (abridged) with Yolanda & Rob (1:44)

Rob: Go ahead ask (abridged) with Yolanda & Rob on the phone: Part I. GO!

Sound of phone ringing, voices sound like they're on a phone

Rob: Hey

Yolanda: Hey there

Rob: This is Rob

Yolanda: This is Yolanda

Ding!

Question 1

Ding!

Rob: Is there something, Yolanda, that you eat regularly for breakfast?

Yolanda: Yes. Um, regularly, I get a pumpernickel bagel with cheddar cheese, a fried egg, turkey bacon. 

Ding!

Rob: Wow! Pumpernickel bagel. Well done. 

Yolanda: I love pumpernickel. Question 2

Ding!

Yolanda: Rob, what is your favorite cookie?

Rob: My favorite cookie is oatmeal raisin cookie. 

Ding!

Yolanda: You are the only person I know that likes that cookie. Are you serious?

Rob: I like oatmeal raisin cookies and I like to put applesauce on them if I don't have ice cream to put on them. But I like them, as almost like a base for something sweet and a little gooier. (He laughs)

Yolanda: I swear, you are the only person I know that likes oatmeal raisin cookies. 

Rob: Nah, there are other people out there. 

Yolanda: No. 

Rob: I cannot be sustaining the market just by myself. 

Yolanda: No, I'm serious, there are so many events that I work, when they have catering and everything and you know how they have that platter of cookies that comes out?

Rob: Yeah

Yolanda: Well, they have the chocolate chip, chocolate chocolate chip--

Rob: Yup

Yolanda: The snickerdoodles, the sugar cookies, and it's all arranged in a pinwheel kind of thing and then there are the oatmeal raisin cookies--I cannot tell you how many events that the oatmeal raisin cookies were just left there. Even like balled up cocktail napkins were like thrown around them. 

Rob: Ha! Question 3

Ding!

Rob: If you could be a member of any other family besides yours, real or fictional, what family would you choose and why? 

Yolanda: Oh that's hard, okay. I'm going to combine the Obamas--

Rob: Yes!

Yolanda: and the Targaryens. 

Ding!

Rob: What??

Yolanda: The Obamas for the high standard of excellence that they have set and the Targaryens for the dragons. 

Rob laughs

Yolanda: Did you see the last season of Game of Thrones?

Rob: Yeah, yeah I did. 

Yolanda: Okay, so, it would totally be the Bells episode, to clean everything up for a minute. 

Rob: (laughs) Clean house. 

Yolanda: Just clean everything up and then start all over again. Question 4

Ding!

Yolanda: What movie makes you cry?

Rob: Well Shawshank Redemption every time. I get sucked into it. Whenever, you know, but a lot of movies make me cry, but Shawshank Redemption definitely makes me cry. I just watched the Eurovision movie and was tearing up during that! Somehow, watching movies makes me weep whether it's sad or joyous. 

Yolanda: Me too! Me too. 

Rob: I also, I find that I cry at successes--

Yolanda: Oh yes!

Rob: often more than I cry at movies--they're great at singing, or they're great at some sport, or escaping from a shitty prison, you know like--

Yolanda: Or Neville Longbottom gets ten points for Gryffindor--

Rob: Oh my god. 

Yolanda: because he stood up to his friends. I cry every time at that look that he gives when he, yeah. So yeah, I totally get that. 

Rob: So good! So, so good. 

Ding!

Rob: Well, some good questions there. And there are so many more, but I think we're gonna have to leave it at that, huh. 

Yolanda: Yeah! We can make a thing out of this. 

Rob: I think we just did! (Rob laughs)

Yolanda: Okay, so I'm gonna hang up. 

Rob: Alright, bye!

Play 2: American Journey (Vashon Island 2017) (6:05)

Singing, bounces around stereo, shortly joined by strumming instrument

Angela: American Journey

Jeff: Vashon Island 2017

Topher: GO!

Swelling of music and outdoor/bird sounds, fade to underscore

Topher: The island is just twenty minutes away by ferry. My friend Jeff invites me out for the day. He’s there to set up a new apartment for his mother, but he’s also been nagging me about going in on some land with him there. I get up early to catch the lone morning ferry. To my surprise, my mother joins at the last minute—

In the background, we hear Topher’s mother speaking Chinese (“deng yi xia!”—wait for me)

—zipping up her jacket as she trips down the stairs.

dialogue has a different audio quality, to separate it from the narration.

Topher: What do you want to come for? There’s nothing to do there.

Angela: It’s good to see new places, isn’t it?

Back to narration:

Topher. Jeff picks us up at the terminal and takes us on a tour.

Jeff: So it's the size of Manhattan but there's only 10,000 people who live there. It's very idyllic and rural and there's no bridge--

Jeff's description of Vashon Island underneath the following paragraph.

Topher. Vashon is a small, isolated hippie community, the Bolinas of Seattle. One of those towns where there’s only one of everything, and that’s the way they like it. We quickly finish the main drag and get into the woods.

Back to dialogue audio quality:

Jeff: Look. There’s an old snowboard factory for sale. We could buy it.

Topher: Come on, man. What are we gonna do with a snowboard factory?

Back to narration:

Topher: We eat lunch at a Mexican restaurant. I’m skeptical of Mexican food on an island full of white people, but it’s not terrible. I’m surprised to learn my mother’s never had tacos before despite having lived here for forty years. After lunch, we stop by a local farm. In the 1930s, Vashon Island was known as one of the centers of strawberry production in the Northwest. Most of the farms were owned by Japanese immigrants but that ended when Executive Order 9066 forced their relocation to California internment camps. Today the island has only a dozen family farms, which leave food in unmanned stands and depend on the honor system for payment. We take some fruit and leave money on the table.

Back to dialogue audio quality:

Jeff: So...what do you think? Pretty nice, huh?

Topher: Yeah, it’s a nice place.

Jeff: Does it make you wanna maybe...buy some land?

Music picks back up

Topher: I don’t know, man. I don’t even know if this country is where I’m going to end up living long-term.

Music strums 

Back to narration:

Topher: While waiting for the ferry back, I tell my mother I worry sometimes about China’s growing dominance on the world stage, how that might affect the way Chinese-Americans are treated.

Back to dialogue audio quality:

Angela: Aiy...That’s not going to happen.

Topher: It could. Look at what they did to the Japanese in World War II.

Angela: That was different. Besides, how they were supposed to know which were the good ones?

Music plays out, the strumming plays the Star-Spangled Banner

Play 3: HEY JOEY, GUESS WHAT? (9:28)

Julia: From the Vault, recorded back in 2016, by Ezra Reaves: HEY JOEY, GUESS WHAT? I LEARNED TO USE GARAGE BAND! GO!

Synthesizer percussion, the whole piece is a synthesized song, sort of shout-sung with Garage Band quality

Ezra: HEY JOEY 

Joey: YEAH?

Ezra: GUESS WHAT  

Joey: WHAT?

Ezra: I LEARNED TO USE GARAGE BAND!

Joey: Oh hey that’s sick  

Ezra: YEAH! And you know what?

Joey: WHAT?

Ezra: It only took me 3 years

Joey: Just drop that bass

Ezra: YEAH?

Joey: On my face!

Ezra: WHAT?

Joey: No not my face

Ezra: WHERE?

Joey: In another place. 

Ezra: OK!

Ezra: There’s nothing fake

Joey: NAH!

Ezra: With the beats I make 

Joey: WOO!

Ezra: So watch out for 

Joey: For what?!

Ezra: this dance break! 

Both: 1 2 3  

Dance interlude with key change

Ezra: Hey Joey!

Joey: YEAH?

Ezra: You wanna start a band?

Joey: I think we can.  What can you play?

Ezra: HOLD UP. Piano solo. 

Beat stops, piano solo.

Beat comes back, key change during "yaaaay"

Both: YAAAAAAAYYYY!!!!!!!!!

Music plays out

Show Outro (11:11)

Syncopated fun electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Julia: Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. If you liked what you heard, subscribe to the show and tell a friend! If you want to support the New York Neo-Futurists in other ways, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or joining our Patreon–Patreon.com/NYNF. Patreon membership gives you access to bonus content like video plays and livestreams. And if this episode gets over 1,000 downloads, we'll order one of our Patreon supporters a pizza on us. We’d really appreciate any support in these difficult times. Contributing to our Patreon helps us continue to pay our artists. 

Take care of yourself, get your feet in the air, and share it with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

This episode featured work by: Yolanda Kae Wilkinson and Rob Neill; Topher Lin, Angela Hsu, and Jeff, with music and sound design by Jessie Alsop; and Ezra Reaves featuring Joey Rizzolo--and thanks to Joey for sharing this play from the vault! Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay. And our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean. Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Léah Miller, and me, Julia Melfi. Take Care!

Music fades out!