So Who are Jay and Jack ?

(par Takaya)

Bonjour,

je poste en anglais ... parceque c'est bien de maintenir une parite francais-pas francais dans ce blog !

Hi there, I'll be posting in english and I guess I'll try to translate the french bloggeur's posts. By the way, when you read the french posts, please read it with a thick french accent !
I digress but one of my favorite Simpsons episode is Triology of Error - there is a scene where Lisa gets to "West springfield" school, steps into a french class, realizes she's in the wrong school so kids laugh "ha ha ha" and the teacher goes "En francais" and the kids laugh in french "oh ho ho".

So who are Jay and Jack ?
I first listened to them when I got into watching Lost the TV show. It took me years to start. The first I heard of LOST was from an intern who came to Japan with episodes in her PC.
En francais with the thick accent : "Quoi ? tu ne connais pas LOST ?"
"What ? You don't know LOST ?" did she say. No I did not know LOST - live with it, these things happen... But a few years later, I watched the Pilot (the Pilot : the first episode, not the guy who plays the Pilot...) and I got hooked.
However the point was that it was quite confusing so I looked for a Lost Podcast on iTunes and I would watch an episode the night, and go to work the next morning listening to the Lost Podcast on the commute to work and going "A HA" (in french, we don't say "O HO", maybe some say "EUREKA"). There was a recap of the episode, interpretations, comments, theories, even easter eggs which I could see on my iPod, listener questions etc... A very comprehensive addition to the TV series.

For those who don't know, a Podcast would be in canadian french "baladodiffusion" (here you need the thick Canadian French accent - certainly my favorite french accent, up there in my favorite french accents with the Belgian French accent) ! So it's like radio which comes up in episodes and you can transfer them on your ipod and listen to them when you want.

So if through watching an episode of LOST I would understand 40% of the episode, then Jay and Jack's podcast would bring me to 80% the next morning and maybe 90% during the week - there were 2 episodes per week if I remember correctly. So it was great. As I had no idea of who was doing what podcast, I had picked up a few Lost podcasts and after some months, I realized that I had reduced the number of podcasts I was listening; but Jay and Jack, I would never miss. Also through time, some podcasters I also liked a lot would realize that podcasting was getting too time consuming for them. But that would not happen to Jay and Jack !

LOST has long ended and the Jay and Jack podcast has turned to other subjects but I am still listening. I used to listen when ironing for the week (which I stopped entirely after Fukushima by the way as it's consuming electricity). I listen when I travel for work (in the Paris subway, on the plane, when I don't commute by bicycle etc ...).
So besides the very comprehensive aspect of the podcast, there was something which was appealing to me, up (or down) in my subconscious layers. Thing is Jay is younger than me, Jack's his dad. How come they could start the podcasting project together and how did they keep the podcasting going on so long - more than 7 years ?
Back 7 years ago, I guess podcasting was a new way to communicate. There were some questions about how podcasters could make a living out of it. Maybe some podcasters manage to get some revenue now. But the cool thing from my point of view is more that Jay would bring his dad on this new media and that Jack (the dad) is now recording himself. They used new technology to record when they were geographically seperated.
They also podcast with their friend Dale who is Jack's middle school or high school friend... There again, how come they have kept close so long ?

So I thought about this (we french people do some introspection sometimes) and it appears to me that I found it awesome that parent and child have kept common interest and common projects. So I take it as a good parenting lecture.
When I was a kid, my dad used to say to me that we'd go backpack together, just him and me - the men and leave the girls at home. Of course, the further we have ever gone backpacking together is in the subway.

My son is now preparing for Montessori Model UN and he'll be representing Cuba with his class-mates. Parents have to help and be involved because he's 10 and it takes a lot attention for a 10 year old kid to get to understand economy, GDP Growth, geopolitics of Cuba with the background of the cold war etc... , hunger in the world and what would be sustainable ways to improve the situation (he'll be in the food and agriculture committee). We'll have to see what we do after the MNUN, for eg if we get into actions against hunger but that's another story.

So if one day when my son is 20, he'd like to do stuff with me and vice versa (as we say in french), there's no shortcut: we have to be happy today about doing stuff together. So I'm super happy to try to understand his MNUN questions. Also I took him to work in the last day of work last year and we cleaned up my office together.

Not only do I hope that in 10-20 years Jay and Jack will still be podcasting, but I also hope that I'll be doing stuff with my kids too.

cheers, Takaya