[TWP 06] Work

"The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one."
Oscar Wilde

Well once again I broke the rules. The b-roll stuff I shot during the beginning wasn't filmed during the hour of shooting, but it was under 15 mins of footage and it still fits into our hour worth of filming.

[TWP06] Work

Work is essentially me just spewing my frustrations I have with my job. As an event electrician many of my jobs have me working on ridiculous things. Many of the examples I say are true in terms of high end event production; some of it is a fabrication.

I would like to thank Edith Blackman for doing a superb job of acting and Bryan and Jeff for shooting, what I believe, the best looking Wonderment yet. The montage opening comes from three separate shows, Marc Jacobs, Y3, and Marc by Marc Jacobs.

Enjoy,
Eli Sands

First Wondie Award

Jeff here. I am proud to announce the first Wondie Award! Since I am now the first person to have written two produced Wonderments, I am giving myself a Wondie Award, for being the most prolific Wondermenter.

Thank you, thank you.

You know, it's really not about the quantity. It's not even about the quality. It's about the weighted mean of quantity and quality which produces the largest number of entertaining moments - or entertoments - through the least amount of effort.

Jeff

[TWP04] Related

Hey all. TWP04 is now up! It was written by myself, Jeff, stars Ivy Hong and myself, and was filmed by Bryan Dembinski. Bryan also did sound, I suppose. It was shot in Central Park on a day when it was just way too cold to be doing something like that. But nonetheless, the shoot was a lot of fun, and everyone did a great job! This is probably the longest any Wonderment could be, unless it's shot live or something, as we just made it under the one hour mark.

Related is based on a true story. Ivy and I actually are related to every guy in each statue we describe. Of course, certain liberties were taken in the telling of how we are connected. The idea behind Related is two characters who are playing a lighthearted game. Trying to out BS one another with fantastic, over the top stories of how they were connected to each person in the statues. After my brother read the script, he immediately said I was trying to go for an Italo Calvino vibe (Invisible Cities, go read it, now), which is perhaps true, especially given the Marco Polo reference, but wasn't at the forefront of my mind when I wrote it. Italo Calvino has a more dreamlike feel, while Related is more fun. Ivy did a great job setting the tone, and I'm very happy with how it turned out.

It was really inspired by a conversation I had, at a dinner party at my advisors house of all places, about Mitochondrial Eve, who is......

**BEGIN SCIENCE ALERT**

the last common female ancestor. Meaning, the woman who was alive most recently, who is a progenitor to every currently living human. It turns out mitochondria are one of the best ways to track maternal genealogy, since mitochondria are passed from mother to children. Since mitochondria are asexual, any change in the mitochondrial DNA in a given family line is strictly due to mutation. All you have to do is track all the different strains of mitochondria that exist in humans today, measure how long it takes, on average, for one line to mutate, and then you can simply calculate how long ago it was that every human had the same mitochondrial strain. It turns out that number is between 180,000 and 240,000 years. So, we all have the same great great ... (How ever many greats it takes to get back 200,000 years) grandmother.

Evolution of course mandates that we're all related to each other, but having a date, and a conceptual woman, we can point to makes it feel a more tangible to me.

**END SCIENCE ALERT**

Mitochondrial Eve got me thinking about the stories that exist which connect all of us. And how they're all probably really really boring. Hopefully the ones in Related are a bit more interesting than the truth.

Jeff