There's this fact that I love that I read somewhere once
that's one of the things
that's contributed to homosapiens' success as a species
is our lack of body hair --
that our hairlessness --
our nakedness combined with our invention of clothing
gives us the ability to modulate our body temperature
and thus be able to survive in any climate we choose.
And now we've evolved to the point where we can survive without clothing.
And it's more than just utility,
now it's a communication.
Everything that we choose to put on is a narrative,
a story about where we've been,
what we're doing,
who we want to be.
I was a lonely kid.
I didn't have an easy time finding friends to play with
and I ended up making a lot of my own play.
I made a lot of my own toys.
And it began with ice cream.
There was a Baskin-Robbins in my hometown,
and they served ice cream from behind the counter
in these giant, five-gallon, cardboard tubs.
And someone told me --
I was eight years old --
someone told me that when they were done with those tubs
they washed them out and they kept them in the back,
and if you asked they would give you one.
It took me a couple of weeks to work up the courage,
but I did,
and they did--
they gave me one.
I went home with this beautiful cardboard tub.
And I was trying to figure out what I could do with this exotic material--
metal ring, top and bottom --
and I started turning it over in my head,
and I realized,
"Wait a minute,
my head actually fits inside this thing--"
(Laughter)
Yeah, I cut a hole out,
I put some acetate in there
and I made myself a space helmet.
(Laughter)
I needed a place to wear the space helmet,
so I found a refrigerator box a couple blocks from home.
I pushed it home,
and in my parent's guest room closet,
I turned it into a spaceship.
I started with a control panel out of cardboard;
I cut a hole for a radar screen
and put a flashlight underneath it to light it;
I put a view screen up which I offset off the back wall --
and this is where I thought I was being really clever --
without permission,
I painted the back wall of the closet black
and put a star field
which I lit up with some Christmas lights I found in the attic,
and I went on some space missions.
A couple years later,
the movie "Jaws" came out.
And I was way too young to see it,
but I was caught up in "Jaws" fever like everyone else in America at the time.
And there was a store in my town that had a "Jaws" costume in their window,
and my mom must have overheard me talking to someone
about how awesome I thought this costume was
because a couple days before Halloween,
she blew my freaking mind by giving me this "Jaws" costume.
Now, I recognize it's a bit of a trope
for people of a certain age to complain
that kids these days have no idea how good they have it,
but let me just show you a random sampling
of entry-level kids' costumes you can buy online right now --
and this is the "Jaws" costume my mom bought for me.
(Laughter)
This is a paper-thing shark face
and a vinyl bib with the poster of "Jaws" on it.
(Laughter)
And I loved it.
A couple years later,
my dad took me to a film called "Excalibur."
I actually got him to take me to it twice,
which is no small thing
because it is a hard, R-rated film.
But it wasn't the blood and guts of the boobs
that made me want to go see it again --
they helped --
(Laughter)
It was the armor.
The armor in "Excalibur" was intoxicatingly beautiful to me.
These were literally knights in shining, mirror-polished armor,
and moreover,
the knights in "Excalibur" wear their armor everywhere.
All the time.
They wear it at dinner,
they wear it to bed.
(Laughter)
I was like, "are they reading my mind?
I want to wear armor all the time!"
And so I went back to my favorite material--
the gateway drug for making:
corrugated cardboard.
And I made myself a suit of armor,
replete with the neck shields and a white horse.
Now that I've over-sold it,
here's a picture of the armor that I made.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now this is only the first suit of armor I made
inspired by "Excalibur."
A couple of years later,
I convinced my dad to embark on making me a proper suit of armor.
Over about a month,
he graduated me from cardboard to roofing aluminum called flashing
and still, one of my all time favorite attachement materials,
pop rivets.
We carefully over that month,
constructed an articulated suit of aluminum armor
with compound curves.
We drilled holes in the helmet so that I could breathe
and I finished just in time for Halloween and wore it school.
Now this is the one thing in this talk that I don't have a slide to show you,
because no photo exists of this armor.
I did wear it to school,
there was a yearbook photographer patrolling the halls
but he never found me
for reasons that are about to become clear.
There were things I didn't anticipate
about wearing a complete suit of aluminum armor to school.
(Laughter)
In third period math,
I'm was standing in the back of class,
and I'm standing at the back of class
because the armor did not allow me to sit down.
(Laughter)
This is the first thing I didn't anticipate.
And then my teacher looks at me sort of concerned
about half way through the class
and says, "Are you feeling OK?"
And I'm thinking, "Are you kidding?
Am I feeling OK?
I'm wearing a suit of armor!
I am having the time of my --"
And I'm just about to tell her how great I feel
when the classroom starts to list to the left
and disappear down this long tunnel,
and then I woke up in the nurse's office.
(Laughter)
I had passed out from heat exhaustion wearing the armor.
And when I woke up,
I wasn't embarrassed about having passed out in front of my class,
I was wondering,
"Who took my armor?!
Where's my armor?!"
OK, fast-forward a whole bunch of years,
some colleagues and I get hired
to make a show for Discovery Channel called "Mythbusters."
And over 14 years,
I learn on the job how to build experimental methodologies
and how to tell stories about them for television.