Influence Peddler

We here at Daydream Misfit have been influenced in our work by many artists, writers, musicians, thinkers, ideas, and movements. This is a list of some of the lifetime influences which have contributed in ways big and small to the lives we live today. If you visit the links, we may earn Amazon affiliate commission.

FDR (he worked with racist Southerners and Western farmers to get big things accomplished, a lesson for today's Left: would you rather be morally superior or get things done?); Kurt Vonnegut (a man who taught us that style can lead substance to very funny places, and that humor redeems cynicism); Order (Chaos is the sexy one, but Order is the one you marry); Andy Partridge (XTC's genius, who showed us that songs are to be guided like plants as they unfurl); Zines (a copying machine was all that stood between creator and public, bypassing the corporate middle-men. later, the internet was briefly a world forged in the spirit of zines until social media algorithms established new gatekeeping); Hanlon's Razor ("cockup before conspiracy," or "never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence," a fine test to run on conspiracy theories broad or personal); The Beatles (the Fab 4 taught us you don't have to be a slave to your success, and your audience will follow wherever your creativity leads. imagine a world where Meta forced them to "niche down" and record endless variants of "Love Me Do"); Kate Bush (she urged us to let the weirdness in and to be unrelentingly ourselves in pursuit of perfection); Franz Kafka (the absolute master of absurd isolation, he observed the world as a strange, unforgiving, mysteriously social construct in which we are all individually lost and irrelevant); Trauma (when you find yourself in middle-age still dealing with the events of your childhood, you realize how much life is shaped by early events, making Trauma one of the most influential items on this list); Scrabble (a game that made us reach for a dictionary to learn new words taught us to keep reaching for dictionaries); Tropical Storms (there's nothing like standing knee deep in the bay halfway through a week of warm wind and rain to connect you with the primordial cosmic soup of existing); Ghost World (Daniel Clowes' graphic novel and the movie of the same name resonates, its seething take on the human condition is the most hopeless, desperate kind of satire, enjoyable for the same reason you listen to the Blues when you're down (not Blues Hammer)); Mikhail Tal (chess is a savagely intellectual game, and no one went for the jugular with more creativity than the fierce Russian whose games sometimes approached the level of Art or surgery); Peanut Butter (interestingly, both creamy and crunchy are the correct answer, depending on where and when you are in your life); The Onion ("half of everything I've ever written is just auditions for The Onion," says Neil; Dungeons & Dragons (what a spark this game is when you first discover it and learn that your own creativity is the game-board, is the cards, is the game pieces, and that you never have to grow up so much you stop playing pretend); Yellow (the happiest color that could possibly be, and next to orange, the most underrated); Samuel Beckett (his dire, helpless absurdity was a brilliant reflection of the world after war and a modernity that has only accelerated its indifference to human importance); REM (this was a band and a singer, Michael Stipe, who, for a decade, spoke what seemed to be universal truths, modeling for us a way to allow a following to inhabit and animate your posture); Sex (it never gets old, quietly guiding almost all human behavior, so how can we not point to it as one of the greatest influences on our art, writing, music, and thinking? we're probably thinking about it right now); Orson Welles (a master storyteller, his work illustrates that the tale comes first, but not without a wink and a nod. harder to appreciate in hindsight since so many of his techniques have been copied so often they've simply become part of cinematic language, but he did them first); Magic: the Gathering (a revelation for those of us who love card games, the concept of constructing your own deck from a large pool of options, a portable game you could carry with you and challenge anyone anywhere to a quick game, with the brilliant hook of color identity that just makes intuitive sense); Cynicism (unfortunately the most accurate but unfair way to look at things, generally, if you assume the worst about people's motives, you're more often than not correct, which doesn't leave much room to maneuver for the ones whose hearts are actually true); LSD (everyone should take a hallucinogenic at least once in their life as a way to understand that what we see is not all there is and that we're really just vibrational energy in a dimension of vibrational energy, and that our day-to-day lives are mundane constructs filled with concerns less important than the mystery which surrounds and inhabits us); 2001 ("my dad left me at the midnight movie to see this when I was 12 and it absolutely blew my mind, taught me that creative ideas could be very, very big in scope," says Neil); Tom Waits (like Andy Partridge, a musician who wrestles with songs, coaxes them, and allows them to tell him what they are trying to become, an approach very useful across artistic disciplines); Greek Mythology (the reading we most enjoyed in school, these stories opened the door to all the other fantasy worlds); The Kids in the Hall (at the time, the sketch comedy these Canadians were doing seemed starkly different from SNL and the other popular comedy of the day. much of it has held up, and we still quote and reference these gems all the time); Vanilla (overshadowed in the popular imagination by chocolate, vanilla is still the best-selling flavor in every state. in a world of Neapolitan bubble-gum mango pistachio Oreo pizazz, it's okay to be the humble potato of frozen sweet comfort food); George Orwell (better than anyone, he demonstrated how language, ideas, and truth are used by totalitarians to control, lessons we wish we weren't so relevant again and again every day); Pinball (the beautiful game. though the machine will attempt to confound you with unbalanced balls of different weight, in the end, if you never miss your shot, you will never lose, so the game becomes as much a battle of your own consistency as one of reflexes and the inevitable call of gravity); Philip K. Dick (he showed us how to write a truly unreliable narrator and characters for whom identity is never a certainty); Robyn Hitchcock (over the course of five decades, Hitchcock has inspired us to examine alternative perspectives and to keep the flames of madness burning. the man can write a hook); Mental Illness (ours, of course, but as much so, others'. mental illness shows us that not everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, that it really does take a village, and that the idea of a meritocracy is unfair from the get-go when, even if we all started at the same starting line, which we don't, not everyone has ever had an equal shot at succeeding); Civilization (long before The Sims, Civ provided "One More Turn" addiction to those of us who were already setting up the Risk and Axis & Allies boards and playing full games by ourselves as different sides); Marcel Duchamp (we discovered the Dadaists as a teen, and their anti-art movement tickled us to no end. Duchamp and friends directly influenced the development of Surrealism and set the stage for all of the modern art of the 20th century all the way to banana-duct-taped-to-a-wall); Greed (again, our own, to our great shame, but especially other's. greed has taught us that the worst aspects of humanity are never too far below the surface and that we rationalization engines seemingly never satisfy our desires); Crispin Glover (The Big Problem ≠ the Solution, the Solution = Let it Be, Glover's masterfully absurd and inexplicable album, directly influences our own You Have Been Selected to Participate in a Game. "Oak Mot" is pure genius); The Far Side (Gary Larson's comic strip not only appealed to our sense of humor, in some ways it catalyzed the creation of our own with its simplicity, absurdity, and insight); Autism (this list is randomized or autism might have appeared at the top. Autism and an inability to interact with this odd social world and the other hairless apes permeate every moment of our existence on this planet of ugliness and unstated rules); Brazil (Terry Gilliam's finest film, Brazil poked fun at the bureaucratic dystopia we were well on our way to becoming. Visually fascinating, silly, dire, and laugh-out-loud funny. The way we want to be); Talking Heads (more autism, probably, the band was tight and inventive. David Byrne shared a trait with other songwriters on this list, the ability to take the points-of-view of flawed characters with distinct points of view, a technique we try to use in our work often; Counterculture Movement (it wasn't the hippie style or free love that appealed to us, it was self-expression in a world which felt like it could still be changed by popular will, an attitude of disrespect which has persisted in us despite being smacked down in the Reagan years and relegated these days to culture war issues rather than well-reasoned political movements for social change at the government level); Ray Bradbury (the master of the short-short story which sticks with you for a lifetime. The Illustrated Man and other collections got absolutely worn out in our household, and hopefully, some of his cleverness seeped into some of what we do); The Daily Show (Jon Stewart's TDS has long been an indictment of the news media itself, more even than of its political targets. For almost three decades now, it's maintained a high level of writing quality and been an exemplar of what humor ought to strive for in the online age); Elvis Costello (a reminder that sometimes you've got to bang words together to make sparks, with a smile and a sneer. Also, nerds rule.); David Lynch (he spotlighted just how bizarre normal, mundane life is if you just shine a light on it and watch long enough, Lynch's perspective insists that surreality and horror are omnipresent, lurking just beneath the skin); MST3K (credit these guys for creating their own genre. did they forge the way for the modern reaction video? we're still inspired by their DIY aesthetic and celebration of the ridiculous); Marijuana (although "I do X better when I'm high" is often self-deception, it's also absolutely true for creative endeavors, removing mental blocks and helping one enter flow-space); Cereal (hear us out. outside of the shower, we've had most of our best ideas while mindlessly eating a bowl of cereal. there's something about the first meal of the day tradition, those 30 spoonfuls of sweet fast breaking, that beats even caffeine when it comes to jogging loose awesome concepts); Legion (a beautifully crafted show, its form follows its function, a disjointed compositing of timelines and settings simulating the madness of its main character. reminds us again to let the idea become what it intends to be); Steven Wright (the king of deadpan one-liners reminds us that you don't have to be over the top and tryhard wacky to be hilarious. we're looking at you, Carrot Top); Watchmen (on the other hand... unlike many others on this list, this graphic novel is a vote for meticulous plotting and concept deconstruction rather than nurturing a seedling. when it works, it's amazing. respect.); Drug Addiction (again, this is about how other people's addictions have impacted our lives. from a dad who had six kids, raised none of them, and spent all his money on cocaine and beer to being beaten for no reason by a crackhead ex who believed he was the devil, other people and their drug problems have often become our problem, too); H. P. Lovecraft (he opened up a universe of cosmic horror that many others, including ourselves, have been mining for a century now, and though his style was stodgy and of the time, the concepts he introduced still fascinate and inspire); Adult Swim (our Adult Swim era was Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Sealab 2021, Harvey Birdman, aired next to various anime, and the late-night shot of absurdism got into our blood and stayed there, our motto to this day being "you never know when a cow is going to walk through the living room carrying a suitcase"); Rationalization (YOU NEED A THNEED); Woody Allen (legitimately funny and for a long time, what we anxiety-ridden, uncertain young schlubs of the era needed to see, a nerd who cast himself as the hero and often got the beautiful girl. he made us believer we could write for the underdog); Vic Thrill (we learned of Vic Thrill on an episode of This American Life, and after looking into his music and the Vic Thrill salon, became fascinated by the identity he adopted, which to us was a meth-fueled David Bowie fused with Tony Robbins, a man from Venus selling everyone the idea that they could be what they wanted. the American creation myth, that we are all John Wayne or Marilyn Monroe, and we can create ourselves in any form we choose); The Beat Writers (oh, these guys got into our footsteps for a couple decades, and sometimes we still check our pulse by their measure. On the Road is essential); Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman's shrewd, hilarious, and incredibly grim portrait of we the artist. A good movie to revisit as you age and your health starts falling apart and a reminder to do your work, though not necessarily why)

Ghost Lee Lemur