Bionic

Yesterday, the Bionic podcast, with Matt Alexander and Myke Hurley, ended. It was one of my favorite podcasts. I started listening to it when it was over on Myke’s 70 Decibels podcast network. I followed through the 5by5 transition, and onward. Every week, Matt and Myke would discuss some tech announcements — usually things unrelated to Apple — and go over how they might impact the market. Matt was very pro-disruption, and Myke was very cautiously optimistic. What made it unique, at that time, was the banter between them. Little in-jokes, and innuendos filled in the gaps around what they were talking about. Myke was vigilant to keep the show from going off the rails, always pulling Matt back from excess, until one day…

Episode 51, United Queendom, was when the show pivoted. Myke let the train jump the tracks, and it just kept going. Instead of a technology show with flourishes of personality, it was all personality. Pop culture, and mock technology coverage threaded through with in-jokes becoming stronger, and more thought-out. It was two British guys, on the phone, just using their imagination to build a baffling little world.

I loved the change of pace for the show. I was not sure how long it would last — if they’d just decide it wasn’t working and veer back towards sanity, but after a couple months, I was reasonably certain that wasn’t happening. Around this time, I had started the silly iTunes reviews. I wrote something based on their weeks of insanity — their world building — and I put out the review on the iTunes store. Their Volcano lair, fire wall, all the details were lifted from their episodes. Apparently, Matt noticed it and decided to do a reading with Myke in Episode 64, Confidential at Best, at 30 minutes in. I was a little worried I wasn’t as funny as I thought I was, but they apparently liked it. They even asked for a full movie screenplay for Confidential at Best, which I scribbled out, and have since hidden away from humanity because it is so bad. So. Bad.

From time to time, Matt or Myke would mention that a podcast episode was going off script from what I had written — as if I was writing any of their brilliant insanity — and I must say it was flattering. I didn’t write the stuff for the attention from them, but I did write it to hopefully entertain them, as some kind of modest reciprocation for their own entertainment they were providing me.

I was not alone in wanting to return a little something back to them, some fan art for them to stick to their refrigerators. It is probably a sign of mental illness that so many people would just make things out of sheer love of the show. But it’s a marvelous mental illness. I count many of them as internet-friends on Twitter. It helped take my mind off of things to scribble-out some ridiculous, creative nonsense.

From Matt Alexander’s farewell post:

Personally, whilst going through periods of intense self-doubt and worry regarding Need and the future, Bionic represented a moment — albeit brief — of respite, ridiculousness, and disconnection from reality. I know it was emblematic of something similar for Myke, too.

Fortunately, I was able to listen to the entire live broadcast of the last episode yesterday. I was shocked when Myke plugged Defocused as a place for Bionic fans to go, and even more shocked when he said it was one of his favorite podcasts he listens to right now. Myke was correct to disclaim his recommendation by acknowledging that Dan and I had only 3 episodes (4 now), and that we could go “bat poop crazy”.

I’m glad I could listen while everything was closed up, and packed away. I am so sorry to see it go. It’s like a TV series ending. There are some you wish could go on forever, and some you wish had ended long ago. It is for the best they are in the former camp, instead of the latter, but that doesn’t mean I will miss their weekly lunacy any less.

My Super-Favorite Episodes (in no sane order):

2014-07-09 12:13:19

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