Videos
Organising these by series...
Pretty Good
A show about stories that are pretty good. This is the classic stuff. I think all the episodes are great, but here are my favourites:
- Episode 2: Larry Walters has a flying lawn chair and a BB gun — Just a great showcase of Jon's wonderful way of telling stories. I particularly love the use of unlicensed music here.
- Episode 3: Lonnie Smith — Absolute rollercoaster of a story. Much like the previous episode I think the use of unlicensed music is so good... These early Pretty Good episodes have a great vibe because you can tell it was just him doing it for fun.
- Episode 8: Why do I choose this for a living? — The original video got taken down because the poker overlords didn't like that it was using material from their broadcasts. So this is a re-upload. This is probably another 'comfort media' type thing for me, which is pretty funny considering the subject matter.
- Episode 13: Randall Cunningham Seizes the Means of Production — I believe this was made/released when Vox writers (including Jon) were unionising. Looking through american labour history through the lens of players organising is really cool...
Chart Party
A series of videos more explicitly about sports stats, whether it's athlete stats or any other random thing that could be quantified somehow. There's a bunch more than the ones listed here but these are my faves.
- The Bob Emergency — Two part study of athletes named Bob. I put this on at a random party and people were transfixed.
- The Browns live in Hell. — A video about an objectively cursed team.
Dorktown
Usually multi-part docos, usually about sports. I guess a bit of a spiritual successor to Pretty Good, until Jon picked up Pretty Good where he left it a few years ago.
- The History of the Seattle Mariners — My comfort media... This is the first of a few 'history of a team' series and I still think it's the best one. But maybe it's just because I love baseball.
- Captain Ahab: The Story of Dave Stieb — I love baseball!!!!!!!!!
Other
- Fighting in the Age of Loneliness — We've talked about this one I think? Every time I despair a little more than usual about the state of my weird thing I'm into (independent video game making) getting absorbed into the Big Machine Of Capital I just end up thinking about this one, and sometimes I rewatch it. It doesn't make me feel better about it, but that's just how it is.
- Why you should never vote: an explainer — A great argument against voting. Really.
Fiction
- The Stallion — Baseball horror story, dread unraveling at a devastating pace. Need I say more? It fucking rocks.
- Barry Bonds enters the world of MYST — HTML5 remake of the original piece made by yours truly, published on itch.io. I love this one so much, the idea of making a dead simple HTML-based functional MYST parody is so clever and beautiful, and I just love this story, too.
- 17776 & 20020 — This is your reminder to actually read these if you haven't got around to doing that yet. Just take an evening or two or three, what else do you have on anyway?
Essays
- A eulogy for RadioShack, the panicked and half-dead retail empire — A great collection of stories from when Jon was working at RadioShack. Reading this is when I realised his writing reminded me of like, Kurt Vonnegut and (my favourite poet) David Berman.
- There is no future of baseball — A prelude to 17776. A beautiful elegy for baseball, and Pioneer 10. Sidenote if you haven't seen the film Eephus, you should. I actually referenced this piece in my letterboxd review lol.
- Secret Base Hall of Fame: Casey Fossum — Speaking of the eephus, I love this piece about uh when Jon got absolutely owned by a child while playing MLB 2006 online multiplayer.
- The funniest video game I have ever played — Jon's adventure in the game Rust. "This isn’t a review of Rust. I have no idea whether this game is good or bad. I wholeheartedly agree with every opinion of it that anyone has ever had, even if those opinions directly conflict with one another. Continuing."
- Participation trophies are great — I just like this one. "A participation trophy can be a seemingly small but surprisingly meaningful gesture. When the machine eats you up, as it is built to do, your spirit is all that will save you. Love yourself."
- Thunder over Louisville: Worshipping the death machines — An essay grappling with the duality of finding the sublime in human innovation and the reality that human innovation is mainly used for killing other humans. Watching the Artemis II launch made me think of this piece again...
References and further reading
- Boisebration — A nicely curated collection of Bois' work, sorted by topic. It's really good. I'm sure there's lots in here you'll find that specifically interests you!
- Well it's an essay about Jon — An essay/guide to Jon Bois' work by Colin Spacetwinks made in Twine. I found a lot of his older works through this. It's a great retrospective (?) of his work too.