About The Institute

photo by George Unpingco

It all started with three bored co-workers circulating a semi-daily “Top 5” list. It has since expanded to a multi-media empire, incorporating print (paper and online), live DJ sets in noted drinking & dancing establishments, a bar trivia team (thousands of dollars in prizes won to date), and even an annual athletic competition.

But let’s start with the three original co-workers. Professional educators, and gentlemen all. (The name of the school that employs them is being withheld here, as much “Idle Time” work over the years has been done during duty hours when we probably should have been molding young minds.)

First, there’s Mike Di Gino (known as “Midnight Disco Goblin” or MDG for short), he of the stubbled chin and spiky coif. The Idle Time Den Mother and All-Around Grand Poobah. Editor and publisher of the zine, organizer of the Idle Time Games, and in general a humming little ball of energy, a mini-sonic boom in a track jacket. Without him, none of this would exist in its current form.

Then, there’s Will Howell (known as “DJ Lazy Bear” in the seedier clubs). Will has been one of my best friends for over fifteen years. He can talk for hours on any cultural or societal subject, revealing the keenest intellect I’ve had the pleasure to know, and an artistic soul…and none of you will hear any of it because the rat bastard won’t fucking write it down. Seriously, trying to get this guy to put finger to keyboard (or, God forbid, pen to paper – he does not have a grown-up’s handwriting) is like trying to squeeze a nickel from a Scotsman. So expect minimal input from this jackass…but he’s vital to the collaborative process. Lazy Bear has since moved on from the educational field, and is currently crunching numbers for the State.

And me, Matt Isenhower, your Humble Narrator. (“The Holy Bee of Ephesus,” or, if you’re buying the drinks, just plain “Isey.” A nickname within the group was especially important to avoid confusing me with Mike’s kid brother and occasional IT contributor, Matt “E.A.D.” DiGino. Although to be fair, I had the name Matt years before that Frylock-looking motherfucker.)

So the three of us, like anyone working an eight-hour day, often found ourselves with yes, idle time on our hands. A Post-It with something like “Top 5 Overrated Bands” or “Top 5 Gangster Movies” would be passed among us in between (or during) classes, each of us contributing our rankings. A harmless diversion.

But then we made two discoveries:

1)      All three of us are narcissists with raging egos, and

2)      We disagreed on matters musical as often as we agreed, which inflamed #1.

Mike made the first official “Idle Time” compilations, a decade-themed collection (Best of the 60s, 70s, etc.), and Will put together the first “Best of the Year” disc as a Christmas gift for his students in 2002, with each of us contributing key tracks from our favorite albums of that year. We upped the ante the next year, making the other two listen to any albums from our list not on the others’ lists. Then we added the scoring system. I remember Mike created an Excel sheet to record all the scores, and I thought, “Gosh, we’re really going a little overboard with this.” Little did I know…

We began churing out an annual “Best Of” disc, containing selections from what we had collectively deemed the best albums of the year, and distributing it gratis to anyone who was interested. Original cover art was part of the disc packaging from the get-go, culminating in 2007’s fifth anniversary Ultra Pretentious Box Set (collector’s items these days). In 2009, to accommodate growing membership in the Institute, we expanded our Top 20 list to a Top 40 list.

Once in a blue moon, the Institute opens the books and adds a new member, beginning in 2005 when Rex Flores (“Tyrannofloresrex”) became a made man. Rex – film student, globe-trotter, and all-around bon vivant — is a decade and change younger than us, and is in fact, a former student of ours. Adding him was like the addition of Scrappy Doo to Scooby’s gang, only instead of a horrific, shrill vortex of suck, Rex is a horrific, shrill burst of youthful enthusiasm and social conscience (and in 2010, Idle Time’s European correspondent.)

2006 saw the first version of the Idle Time Games (originally in Winter and Summer editions, now a one-time-a-year blowout), and 2007 was the debut of the Idle Time online Google Group, inviting all and sundry to weigh in on such topics as fantasy sports, the good ol’ Top 5 lists, and comics, comics, comics. The Games and the Group have created a far-flung family of Auxiliary Idle Timers. Unfortunately, the Group has fallen into disuse – but never fear, our new web community is right here, and I’ll be occasionally blowing the dust off the best posts from the Group’s archives and re-posting them here for your reading pleasure. 2008 saw the addition of electronica/ambient enthusiast and circuit-bender extraordinaire Donald Hanson (“Arcturus BTW”) to our little collective, and long-time contributor/local musician Erik Hanson (“Ghostmann”) officially signed on to the Institute’s Board of Directors in 2011.

And there’s some individuals who are always willing to wield a pen or lend a hand to our nonsense. We simply couldn’t do without input from folks like Jeannie Howell, George Umpingco, John Muheim, Jim Shepherd, and Matt Di Gino.

How do we determine our Best Of album rankings? MDG explained it at length in our Decades book (copies still available!), but I’ll summarize: Originally, the all the albums were given a 1-to-10 score from all of us, and the totals averaged out to make our rankings. Boring. Our new scoring system adds an element of randomness. We use a method dubbed “Rock and Roll Roulette” (with half-a-second’s pause for thought, the  name actually makes no sense, but that’s how we roll), we’ve made the selection process much more confrontational, emotionally charged, and awkwardly hostile. In other words, way more fun. The Institute assembles its membership, everyone puts their favorite albums of the year on individual index cards, the cards are shuffled, and two are drawn. Of those two albums, whichever one the majority of the group would least like to listen to goes in the reject pile. After one round, all the rejects are “rouletted” against each other, round after round, until the last “reject” earns the lowest position on the list (or is booted off entirely, depending on how many we started with.) This gives us a countdown process, from least liked to beloved-by-consensus, from #40 down to #1. Savvy? This process brings out our  worst traits. I rage, Rex sulks, Mike engages in underhanded, swinish maneuvering and deal-making to advance his agenda, and Will deliberately and perversely tries to fuck things up and upset people. It’s awesome, and I wouldn’t want to miss out on a minute of it.

So you can see why our first Institute motto was “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.” But that has been replaced by a motto that’s more all-encompassing, and sums us up just as well:

ENTHUSIASM CAN SAVE THE WORLD