T-Pain, king of autotune, put on an amazing Tiny Desk performance back in 2014, and the internet lost its collective mind because it was so dang good.

This reaction affected T-Pain in way I hadn’t expected, which led to this quote from This is Pop documentary:

“There was a point where I just got more angry.

Like, it was such a surprise to everybody.

Did you think my whole success was based off software? You still gotta write good songs, you still gotta produce good beats.…In one light, it showed how much people respected me more. In another light, it showed how much people didn’t respect before.

So, my philosophy at this point is to make myself happy. I just wanna make music that makes me feel good, and if you don’t like it, I didn’t make it for you.

And if you do like it, welcome to the club.”

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What Something You Do Just for You?

Let’s channel T-Pain and do something that we love just for us.

Personally, I’ll be making terrible, terrible music on my violin – I started taking violin lessons again!

Also, this newsletter is for me. I’m glad you happen to like it!

Make something this week, just for you:

• If people happen to like it, awesome.
• If other people don’t like it, it’s not for them.

What are you making this week? Hit reply and let me know.

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The Nerd Out: Arrival Revisited

Last night, I revisited Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve, for the first time since seeing it in theaters many years ago.

I was blown away yet again, even though I knew how the story ended. It’s worth a watch on Amazon Prime, especially if you remember how it ends.

Amazing science fiction, beautifully shot, incredibly well scored, and a story that will sit with you for long after the credits roll.

Arrival is based on a short story in Ted Chang’s Stories of Your Life and Others. Chiang’s ability to combine world-building, heady science fiction, and thought-provoking questions into a few pages is nothing short of brilliant.

This book and Exhalation, are must-reads for any sci-fi fan.

I want to give a quick shout out to Arrival’s hauntingly beautiful soundtrack too – I often listen to this 30-minute looped version of On the Nature of Daylight from Richter to get into a flow state.

Villeneuve also directed Sicario, Blade Runner 2049, Dune (and its upcoming Part 2), and has firmly reached the directorial status of “I will see whatever he movie he’s attached to, no questions asked.”

Big thanks to T-Pain, Denis, Ted, and Max for putting their work out into the world.

I’m gonna go make stuff too.

-Steve

PS: Also yes I have seen the Juvenile Tiny Desk concert too, and it’s delightful.

I was recently reading My Side of the Mountain​, by Jean Craighead George, a 1959 novel about a boy named Sam who escapes the big city to live in the wilderness for a year.

His first day is harrowing. His first night, even worse.

Luckily, he survives and things start to look differently:

“The sun has a wonderfully glorious habit of rising every morning.

When the sky lightened, when the birds awoke, I knew I would never again see anything so splendid as the round red sun coming up over the earth.”

Later in the book, Sam survives an ice storm and emerges from his dwelling to see the devastation:

The mountain was a mess. Broken trees, fallen limbs were everywhere. I felt badly about the ruins until I thought that this had been happening to the mountain for thousands of years and the trees were still there, as were the animals and birds.

Just a good reminder in the grand scheme of things on this planet…we’re not very important. We can take things a bit less seriously, we can have more forgiveness, and we can slow down a bit.

Good or bad, whatever we are facing in our lives, “this too shall pass.”

The sun will rise, the trees will grow, the birds will sing.

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The Nerd Out: Marco PM

For the past 15 years, I’ve listened to music from one musician more than any other, and I guarantee you’ve never heard of him.

The man’s name is Marco PM:

• Marco’s mixcloud link​
• Marco’s website​

The dude has been putting out mixes since 2004 that will put you in a better mood, guaranteed.

These mixes are free, 80-minute vocal trance mixes that Marco has curated based on the best stuff from the past year. They all come with amazingly uplifting names like:

• ​Santorini Waves​
• ​Voices from Heaven​
• ​Dream Melodies​

I have no idea if this is Marco’s full time job, where he lives, or who he is. But I’ve listened to these mixes on repeat since 2008. The majority of the articles at Nerd Fitness and SteveKamb.com are all written to this music.

My next project will be created with the help of Marco too.

If you need some tunes to get you through the day, this is the fastest way I’ve found that gets me into a positive flow state.

Thanks Marco!

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Today’s Question: Where do you care too much?

What’s one thing you’re doing with your life that is taking an unnecessarily inflated amount of importance?

Let’s remember: we’re not that important, the sun always rises, and this too shall pass…

How can that inform your decision making and attitude today?

-Steve

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I recently revisited The Wright Brothers, the biography of Orville and Wilbur trying to become the first humans to crack powered-flight.

Prior to their flight experiments, the Wright brothers opened a bike shop in 1893 to capitalize on the growing trend of cycling in America.

And bikes becoming popular is a good thing, right?

“The bicycle was proclaimed a boon to all mankind, a thing of beauty, good for the spirits, good for health and vitality, indeed one’s whole outlook on life.”

But of course, it doesn’t matter what anybody does, people are going to complain or “concern-troll” whatever happens to be popular:

“Voices were raised in protest. Bicycles were proclaimed morally hazardous. Until now children and youth were unable to stray very far from home on foot. Now, one magazine warned, fifteen minutes could put them miles away.​

Because of bicycles, it was said, young people were not spending the time they should with books, and more seriously that suburban and country tours on bicycles were “not infrequently accompanied by seductions.”

No matter how moral our cause, nor how positive our products or services might be, somebody somewhere will be probably a stick in the mud about it.

Because humans are the worst.

Might as well just do the thing.

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Steve Nerds Out: Blatant Product Placement That Actually Inspires.

I’ve recently watched three origin story movies about specific products and consumerism, and they were all surprisingly entertaining:

1. ​Air (Amazon Prime): The story of the employees at Nike, then a running shoe company (a distant 3rd to Converse and Adidas in the basketball market), and their risky moves to acquire Michael Jordan as a client. Ben Affleck does a great job as the pseudo-sen master Phil Knight. Plus, it’s Affleck and Damon back together.
2. ​Blackberry (rental): The rise and fall of Blackberry. This serves as both an entertaining and enjoyable origin story (think The Social Network), and also a cautionary tale about corporate hubris. Glen Howerton of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame does an amazing job as Blackberry’s unhinged CEO, Jim Balsillie.
3. ​Flamin’ Hot (Disney+): A fun, lighthearted origin story of Richard Montañez, the janitor at Frito-Lay who created the famous Flamin’ Hot flavor (inspired by his Mexican heritage), which helps save the company during the recession of the early 90s. This is the most light-hearted of the three, and really enjoyable.

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Question of the Week:

Is there something you’re not doing because you’re worried about how others will react?

As Seth Godin says, “Be judged, or be ignored.”

Those are the only two options.

-Steve

PS: “The Watch” (a Ringer podcast) just concluded their 4-part discussion/lovefest of season 2 of The Bear. If you watched the show and need to nerd out about it, this is a great listen.

I had a fun talk yesterday with my co-worker Matt at Nerd Fitness about our coaching program; specifically about the importance of finding the balance between two key elements:

• “Manageable” = we can do it consistently and sustainably.
• “Meaningful” = our efforts create actual results.

If we’re trying to change some part of our life, we need to live in the sweet spot where the two overlap. Too much of one, and not enough of the other, and we end up burned out or spinning our wheels.

Let’s look at two quick examples:

If somebody wants to lose a lot of weight:

• “Drink an extra glass of water each day” is certainly manageable, but won’t result in any meaningful weight loss.
• “Eating 1200 calories a day and working out 2 hours per day is definitely meaningful for weight change, but most people will bail after two days.
• “Severely reducing liquid calories & going for a daily walk” can a good balance of the two.

If we’re trying to learn a new language:

• “Move to a foreign country and only speak that language” will result in rapid language learning, but that’s not manageable for most people with families and kids and jobs.
• “Spend 5 minutes per day on Duolingo” is manageable, but probably not meaningful enough to get to us to the place we really want to be: have a fluent conversation with a native speaker.
• “Hire a virtual tutor 1 hour per week and then practice 15 minutes per day out loud” can be a good balance of the two.

Comically, I found myself too far down the rabbit hole on “How to make this newsletter meaningful” that I forgot to make it “manageable.” Specifically, fun.

This is why it’s been a few months since I last sent out a dispatch!

Okay maybe it has something to do with the secret project and the fact that I have been playing an unhealthy amount of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (110+ hours with so much of the game left to play!).

My goal with this newsletter is to work my way towards the right amount of “Super fun for Steve to do” and provide you, dear reader, with enough value that it makes it meaningful for you to read.

I’ll leave you with something I am nerding out about this week…

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Steve Nerds Out: The Bear, on Hulu

The premise: A Michelin-star chef has to move home to Chicago to take over the family sandwich shop. Well acted, amazing dialogue, feel good story, killer soundtrack. 10 episodes, 30-minutes each.

If you liked Ted Lasso and Chef and need another drama-comedy to fill that void, you’ll love this. Here’s the trailer for the first season. Along with Severance, this was my favorite new show in 2022.

The second season just came out, and it starts out with “The Show Goes On,” an absolute JAM from Bruce Hornsby.

This live version of “The Show Goes On” is so delightfully 90s, I’ve been listening to it on repeat for the past few days, and it’s got me googling the sheet music so that I can learn to play it.

Now, if you’re like “who the hell is Bruce Hornsby, Kamb?”…

1. Shame on you.
2. You know Hornsby. You just know THIS song of his, but you remember it from Tupac’s “Changes.”

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Back to you: Is there an area of life where you’re too focused on “manageable” and not enough on “meaningful,” or vice versa?

Next, have you watched The Bear yet?

Do you also love 90s piano dudes like Peter Cetera and Bruce Hornsby?

-Steve

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Here are the books, shows, and things I nerded out about in February!

Let’s get weird.

Churchill’s Biography

I tried trudging through the first volume of William Manchester’s Churchill’s biography (1400 pages) in 2021. After abandoning it a half dozen times, I decided to try again and tackle it one page at a time, the same strategy I used to finally read War and Peace.

This was my one rule: read at least one page per day.

This ensured I never had to ask, “What the hell is happening ?” It gave me permission to pick up the book for a few minutes at a time. Some days it was an hour, while other days it was just a single page. I finally finished it this past month!

Here are a few things that popped out:

We know about Churchill’s leadership during WWII, but I had no idea he volunteered to spend months on the front lines and in the trenches of France in World War I.

Oh, and he essentially invented the tank:

It would be simple, he wrote, to quickly “fit up a number of steam tractors with small armoured shelters, in which men and machine guns could be placed, which would be bullet-proof.” A “caterpillar system would enable trenches to be crossed quite easily, and the weight of the machine would destroy all wire entanglements.”

Winston summoned Captain Eustace Tennyson D’Eyncourt, an Admiralty designer, and asked him to devise a “land ship” using caterpillar treads. Secrecy was urgent; to mislead the Germans, everyone connected with the project would tell others in the Admiralty that they were making “water carriers for Russia”—vessels to carry large vats of drinking water into the czar’s front lines. Colonel Swinton predicted that the War Office would designate them “WCs for Russia.”

He suggested they be called “tanks” and Churchill agreed.

Most of Churchill’s “impromptu” speeches had been polished and rehearsed for 6-8 hours each. This passage from one of his employees cracked me up:

Norman McGowan, one of his valets, was surprised on his first day to hear his master’s voice rumbling from the bathroom. He put his head in and asked: “Do you want me?” Churchill rumbled, “I wasn’t talking to you, Norman. I was addressing the House of Commons.”

Churchill was also an accomplished painter, bricklayer (!), and prolific writer. He published 43 books, hundreds of articles, while also living his hectic political life.

This quote about book writing is one of the truest things I’ve ever read:

“Writing a book “is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”

Volume One only covers Churchill’s life through 1932. There are two more volumes, both of which are 1300+ pages and dense AF. I’ll probably hold off on the next volume for another month or two, when I’m ready to dive deep into World War 2 history.

After reading about Churchill and WWI, I was reminded of an amazing historical fiction book that takes place over the same time period…

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​The Fall of Giants (Century Trilogy Book 1) by Ken Follett

Ken Follett is the GOAT of riveting historical fiction. His book, Pillars of the Earth, is my favorite work of fiction, and his other three books in his Kingsbridge series are equally impressive.

Although I had read The Fall of Giants only two years ago, it felt right to revisit it after reading about Churchill and the Great War.

Taking place during the first 25 years of the 20th century, this book chronicles the lives of fictional characters from around the globe leading up to and during World War I: a Russian factory worker and his scoundrel of a brother, a brother (coal miner) and sister (a housekeeper) in Wales, a member of the House of Lords, an assistant to president Woodrow Wilson, and a German diplomat. The way each story weaves together is riveting.

Ever since I updated my views on reading and book lists, I have revisited a lot of my favorite books to better understand and absorb them. So, after reading Churchill, rereading this 865-page epic was a breeze.

Eventually I’ll read the next two Churchill volumes (encompassing World War II), before tackling the next book in the Century Trilogy. I imagine my historical trip through WWII will include lots of documentaries and biopics as well.

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​Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be, by Steven Pressfield

I’m a huge fan of Pressfield (author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and The War of Art, a must read for any creative), and this book was a great kick in the ass (duh) as I’m working on my next book proposal. Each page contains some pearl of wisdom.

My favorite passage that has helped me get my creative act together:

“When I sit down to write in the morning, I literally have no expectations for myself or for the day’s work. My only goal is to put in three or four hours with my fingers punching the keys. I don’t judge myself on quality. I don’t hold myself accountable for quantity.

The only questions I ask are, Did I show up? Did I try my best?”

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​Summer Knight, by Jim Butcher

*Puts on Kevlar.*

Okay! I read the first book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, and it didn’t totally grip me. I shared this with my community and everybody replied, “You have to stick with it until book 4, then they get AMAZING!” So I did. I read the first three books in the series, and then tackled book 4, Summer Knight.

They were all…pretty good!

But I’ll be honest, it wasn’t hard for me to stop reading for days at a time. I gave the series a chance, and they didn’t grab me enough for me to continue reading them. Compared to the Jack Reacher series, where I’ll start a book one day and forget to eat and sleep because I’m so hooked…this series just didn’t grab me enough. And that’s okay.

Something I’m working on: giving up on more books, shows, and movies that don’t hold my attention! Life is short.

SHOWS AND MOVIES

​All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix)

I figured that between the Churchill Biography and Fall of Giants, I needed to round out my World War 1 deep dive with a viewing of Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front, the third movie adaptation of the 1928 novel of the same name.

I have seen (and loved) 1917, so I was interested to watch a story told from the perspective of “the enemy.” Fall of Giants did a great job of sharing the perspective of the soldiers on the other side of the trenches: just like the Brits, French, and Americans..it was young German and Austrian men who were sent to die for a cause by men who didn’t have to deal with the consequences of their decisions.

This movie is gripping, heartbreaking, and a terrifying reminder of the horrors of war.

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​American Experience: Walt Disney (PBS via Amazon Prime)

I had seen the multi-part documentary on Disney Plus, The Imagineering Story, and I had read Neal Gaber’s biography, but I was intrigued by the PBS documentary to get a more well rounded picture of the enigmatic (and occasionally controversial) man. Here are my two favorite parts:

When Walt built his new headquarters in Burbank, CA… essentially did what Google did, but 50+ years prior. What’s old is new again:

It had a theater, restaurant, soda fountain, cafeteria, and gymnasium, with a member of the ex Swedish Olympic team as a personal trainer, and its own gas station. You could even get your car repaired while you’re at work.

Once Disneyland was built, Walt was fascinated with the customer experience, and regularly lived like they did:

“Walt Disney would get in line for his own rides, and wait as long as it took to see the attraction, and just listen to what people had to say. He might hear something that would spark him.”

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​Full Swing: Season 1 (Netflix)

After 15 years away from golf, I rededicated myself to the game since when I returned to Nashville in 2020. This new documentary from Netflix does a fantastic job of pulling back the curtain on what happens on the PGA tour for players and what goes on behind the scenes. It’s not as good as Drive to Survive, yet. But I hope they continue to do this in future seasons. I really enjoyed the episodes about Sahith Theegala and Joel Dahmen, two unknowns who I now can’t get enough of!

By the way, quick shout out to the amazing Chasing Scratch Podcast, which is a must-listen for any amateur golfer – go back to Season 1, episode 1. You’re welcome.

VIDEO GAMES

I took most of February off from playing any new games, but I did manage to wrap up two games that I had started before leaving Nashville for all of December and January.

​God of War: Ragnarok (PS5)

This game has unbelievable production value, a killer soundtrack, gripping story, and gorgeous graphics. The post game content blew me away. And it kept me riveted for 50 hours. Was it my 2022 Game of the Year? Nope. #2. Santa Monica Studio created a great Disney ride: you had rails to stay within, the experience was fairly scripted, but also world-class and incredible.

Let’s compare that to my 2022 game of the year…

Elden Ring. Duh.

Comparing God of War: Ragnarok to Elden Ring isn’t a fair fight: Elden Ring is one of the best games ever made.

Elden Ring was far more raw and rough around the edges, but felt like a truly open-world experience that dropped my jaw so many times for so many reasons. It’s a handcrafted, gothic masterpiece by a genius. I could go anywhere, try anything, and play in whatever style that suited me. I never knew what was around the next corner, and I couldn’t wait to find out.

To this day I still watch OTHER people play Elden Ring on Twitch just to see how their experiences differ from mine.

I didn’t play Dark Souls until 2018, but I’ve since gone back and played every FromSoft game because they’re so damn good. Elden Ring is the perfect culmination of game designer Miyazaki’s world building and gameplay brilliance.

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​Outer Wilds DLC: Echoes of the Eye (PS5)

I played Outer Wilds in 2022 and it took over my brain for weeks. It has since climbed into my top 5 gaming experiences of all time. It’s a “first person adventure,” but that description doesn’t do it justice. I want to say as little as possible so that you can play it unsullied by spoilers or my review.

All I can say is, if you’re a fan of games like Myst or The Witness, if you like puzzle solving and cerebral thinking…you owe it to yourself to play Outer Wilds.

This 30-hour experience led me to watching dozens more hours of YouTube video essays, studying message boards for secret clues, keeping a detailed notebook of my hypotheses, and more.

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For those keeping score at home, here’s my unofficial “Top 5 games of all time”:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
2. Elden Ring
3. Hollow Knight
4. Outer Wilds
5. The Witcher 3

Quick note: I have a rule that I don’t play online multiplayer games – I have no self control, so I have to play single player games that I can lose myself in for a week or two (or in Elden Ring and Zelda’s case: months). But then I can FINISH the game, archive it, and be content that I had a complete experience.

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