Archives: rocketjump

Pomplamoose. Being visually inventive.

I share respected international journalist, correspondent for The Atlantic and former Jimmy Carter speechwriter James Fallows’ love of this duo.

So it’s lovely to see them back in the game.

Jack Conte here describes how things went sideways for a bit, in a circuitous presentation about his new and worthwhile venture, a way for regular people to collectively patronize creativity that is more day-to-day than Kickstarter.

Mostly when I watch them, I notice the, to me at least, heartbreaking details of the house they clearly live and work in. Heartbreaking in the sense that it’s a thing I would have loved to have done, if it were possible when I was young with the capacity to absorb financial shocks, and had I had the imagination to conceive it.

What they are doing, or the guys responsible for Rocket Jump, or Corridor Digital, is a version of the box ramen fueled internet startup, but with entertainment rather than software as the outcome.

They aren’t the first artist collectives to bootstrap members, but these have a newer quality colored by tech startup culture. That’s not the best culture to emulate, though it seems like these creative takes on it are following a bit more humane path. The tech startup is like house flipping: inflate the value of as simple an idea as possible and sell it high as soon as you can. These creative starups seem to be using the same general template but the end result is creator owned small businesses instead.

This idea deserves a more thoughtful treatment than I can spare the glucose for right now.

So here, have a little improbable combination of Pomplamoose, Ben Folds and Nick Hornby.

Fair enough I suppose.