A Fiercer Delight with Matt Gordon

Damon Fontinel: WNBA Pilgrimages, Brakes, and Telling Stories

• Faith and Community • Season 1 • Episode 5

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0:00 | 23:33

What's the difference between a foundational joy and a fun side joy? 
Damon Fontinel joins the show to talk about WNBA road trips, the year he got tired of paying somebody else to fix his brakes, and the night his wife paid 90 dollars to watch one quarter of basketball.

We get into Damon's farm-boy upbringing in Iowa, his 37-year marriage to Paula, the 27-year-old son who lives two blocks away, and the Caitlin Clark connection that pulled them into Indiana Fever fandom hard enough to drive five hours to a game. Damon also opens up about why his wife sometimes works in the office during games because she thinks she's bad luck, the brake jobs that became a surprise meditation, and what he and Matt have figured out over years of putting events together about whether a story landed.

It's a conversation about telling stories well, the difference between caring without stakes and caring about what matters, and why the people who can pour meaning into things that don't matter at all might be the same people who know exactly what does.

Plus: the time-travel episode of Lost that nearly ended a marriage, why Dunkirk works on the second viewing, and a fake promo code that gets you into the fourth quarter at full price.




Follow us today for some weekly joy.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, welcome to A Future Delight. This is A Future Delight. Uh this is a show about kind of chasing joy in our life, hope in our life, just kind of being happier people, more secure in who we are and who we're becoming. And so I have people on and then we just kind of chase that around through conversation. So today I'm turn joined by Damon Fontenelle. Damon Fontenelle.

SPEAKER_01

Fancy last name. We used to slam it all together and just say Fontenelle. Fontenelle. Just lose that I that's in there. Where's it from? Where are your people from? France. French? I was gonna say it sounds very French. French and Italy. Okay. It's like a combo. You're in the background.

SPEAKER_00

You probably are just the descendant of great kings and lords.

SPEAKER_01

No. I think coal farmers. I think farmers and coal miners.

SPEAKER_00

Which serves you well because you are hail from the great land of Iowa. I do. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Farm?

SPEAKER_01

Farm boy? Farm boy. Yep. Great, great farm experience. Growing up, loved it mostly. Except for the work part. Well, you're wiry. Am I farmers tend to be wiry? I don't know what that means exactly. What does wiry mean?

SPEAKER_00

Skinny and sinewy and not much fat on the bone. I feel like that's the prototypical farmer. Nowadays it might be different because you have machines that do everything. But back in the day, you picture a farmer and it's gaunt and slender. My dad was definitely that.

SPEAKER_01

He was all gristle and muscle. And yeah, hard worker. Yeah, very kind.

SPEAKER_00

I think that's hard too, because like farming beats you up. And so sometimes you can have the rugged exterior, but that might just be caricature. So he was hardworking and yet tender.

SPEAKER_01

Tender's this a stretch, uh, I wouldn't say. Yeah, not tender. I would say quiet might be a better word. A lot of silence. Um, so probably silent strength or um I don't know that he was always a kind man, you know, good dad. Um, but tender's probably not the word either. A little rough, you know, tough, rough and tough, but quiet.

SPEAKER_00

You grew up on the farm doing farm things, and then you became a man, and now you do a bunch of machine stuff. You like AI, you like creative process, you like light shows and guitars and music and computers.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I like all that stuff. I don't love any one thing. I like it all. It's like a painting to me. Like, I don't like lean into one specific thing really hard. And like everything, or are you talking about in the tech realm? In the well, kind of in everything, but the tech realm is a great place. Like, I like the final product probably that all the tech creates and uh brings together more than I do. Hey, you're gonna you're gonna run lights today, or you're going to sit in front of a computer and do code, which I don't do, um, or whatever. And there's not one thing there that I'm just super drawn to. I think it's the tools that get you to the end. So it's a little different look at it.

SPEAKER_00

It's kind of the creative process. You've been in a bunch of jobs where you've been part of the creative process. You've worked at a bunch of churches where you're part of the creative process. Well, not a bunch, four churches. Yeah, four, yeah, ish, four ish, and then some IT work, but always kind of like the creative packaging, the IT packaging was part of that creative. So, in your work in that realm, realms, what is it that spikes your joy? Like, which is the part where it's like this is the crescendo moment for me? It's when it plays out on the stage, is it when the crowd claps? Is it when people stay in the auditorium afterwards? Like, which thing to you is like, I helped create a thing and now I see the beauty in the thing. Is it up front? Where is it for you where you're just like this is the spike moment for me?

SPEAKER_01

Uh, I think it is the I think it is the end product. It's probably just accomplishing what you set out to do, telling a story well, or whatever the goal is of that of that uh event, if it's an event. Um, and then along the way, working with people to get there, when the light bulbs come on and you come up with a great idea, or you think it's a great idea, even if it isn't in the end, you um if uh if I was specific, I'd say like, hey, in this event, we're gonna do um an opening, and the opening is gonna be like this, and then if if whoever I'm bouncing that off of agrees and we start collaborating back and forth, and it like let's say it's funny and we're both laughing, that's pretty that's pretty cool because we like think that's gonna land or that's gonna work and be helpful for people, and then and then the result, if it does, if it doesn't, it's still actually okay because you learn and you can back up and say, Well, well, that didn't work. We thought it was funny in our world, but not for the general public or whatever.

SPEAKER_00

We've been on some of these conversations about there's a subjective nature to putting something on, say an event, um, doing any kind of like you said, storytelling. But also that subjective nature almost ends up landing in objectivity to where almost all the time when we've had these conversations, if we put a number on something, if I walk away from something, we talked about something recently, even today. We were talking about something, and it's like I probably would have put a four or five on it. I think you would have hung a four or five on it. We can come from different vantages with different backgrounds, your farm life, me non. Yeah, uh, and yet we still experience this thing, yeah, and there's an objectivity to where it's like you have never been like that. Was a nine, and I'm like, that was a two. We've never done that.

SPEAKER_01

I think there's something in this, so what is over years we've done this, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You said, okay, I want to tell a story well. How do you know you told it well? Because like if you could capture that, and maybe you have, but it's such a feel thing. Repeating that is the beauty. So what is it that like this one was told well?

SPEAKER_01

I think it's well, it starts in in the beginning, you know, that that story. When when we get together and beg with the big idea, if there isn't some unity in that or consensus in that, we probably won't even go down that road. And so if if we all look at each other and go, that's a story that needs to be told, that's step one, I think. I don't know what the other steps are, but then it's just moving toward that. And I think that makes a good story at that point. It becomes goes from maybe subjective to objective or vice versa. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if I can put my finger on it exactly, and that's the beauty of creativity. And I would say I'm not the most creative person in the world. I lean on other creative people. I do know, I think that is maybe the secret sauce is to know when you're out of your depth in anything in life and when to hand that off or when to bring somebody in.

SPEAKER_00

There's I heard a thing where generations that are native to certain AI technologies can like spot AI glitches. They can spot an AI video faster than say I could spot an AI video, just not because the person has three thumbs, but something even more subtle than that. Yeah. With Story, do you think it's like that where all of us can spot it? Or are there some people with just this palette that like they are probably better at sniffing out this is how you tell it, or not? Or does everyone kind of have that?

SPEAKER_01

I think in the end we know, like when we watch a show on television or hear a song, I think the general public kind of knows, you know, they don't know why they know, but they know, and I think it's that building toward that that process of creating that song or that story. Not everybody has that. Yeah, not everybody has that. We talked the other day about our wives, maybe maybe it was you, I think it was you about time travel. Oh, maybe I was talking about you. That could have been it. Yeah, because you you're watching Lost. Watching Lost, and I've never seen Lost so far.

SPEAKER_00

I've seen like 80 episodes, really liked one of them.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and that was the time travel moment. The time travel moment was good.

SPEAKER_00

That was a great episode, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And Hannah didn't like it.

SPEAKER_00

She was I'm not sure in the moment. Well, this is how it we watched in bed because we're those degenerates. Yeah, uh, we never have a TV in our room until we had four kids, right? And now that's our refuge. And so we had Lost Going On. It was that episode, and like I'm usually watching it as a comedy. I laugh out loud at parts I'm not supposed to. It's a great show, I get it, but also it's like sloppy sometimes. I'm watching this one, and I'm like not on the edge of my seat, but on the edge of my pillow. I'm like leaning forward and I'm like, this is really great. Like the dialogue, the story, the framing. It's I don't know, it's kind of trippy. And in that reverie, that moment, she kind of wakes up. She said, This one's pretty weird, huh? And so then it was like, wait, maybe I'm off. Maybe like uh I had some psychedelics on accident or something with my like I switched medicines. I don't know what's going on. So I get my phone out and I get on like IMDB to see if the world agrees with me or with her. And it was like a 9.7 out of 10. Yeah. So then I show her, I was like, keep watching, see if you get there. And I think maybe she got there. We never followed up. I should follow up if she actually ended up liking it, but it was this, yeah, it was like maybe too far for her.

SPEAKER_01

And you're a great storyteller. So I think your literature background, all the reading you've done, has has developed that. With my wife is the same way, though. I, you know, if we're watching in a simpler form, back to the future, I think my wife is out pretty quick because she's like, I just can't track with that. You know, she just needs more. And I don't know if that's a great example, but that might be a good example of how maybe we kind of can spot it early, like, oh, this is a really good thing, give this time, and yeah. And maybe other folks can't.

SPEAKER_00

Well, there's also, too, maybe like with story, there's the linear approach, which in the West, that's how we've always had story. You're born, you live, you die. And so that's how our stories kind of go too. They're like this left-to-right predictable movement where um someone's doing pretty well, and then they're doing very badly, and then they're doing even worse than that, and then they either die or they rise up. Right. Like that's our story structure, generally.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And so then you have people who don't do that, like time travel, that episode of Lost, and it's people who don't have like a finer story palette who can like restructure that and get to the narrative, probably have a hard time staying on track. I think of Dunkirk. I don't know if you ever saw the film.

SPEAKER_01

I have seen that, it's hard for me to recall it, but it was it's the battle, right? Of Dunkirk.

SPEAKER_00

Is it a flashback? It's like three or four different timelines all happening, and by the end of the movie, you get to piece them together and realize, oh, this wasn't sequential. But the first like hour I'll have to go back to that. The first hour is non-sequential, and you don't know it. You think it's sequential, but then like certain things don't make sense. Okay, and so then you're like, wait, and then by the end, you're like, Oh, he's telling like three or four different frames of the same story, and now I can put all the pieces together. I bet half the people in the world watch that and are just like, Why didn't you just tell us straight? You know, and I do sometimes I'm like that, to be honest. I think it might have been a better movie if he told it straight, but it was definitely more artistic. And for me, yeah, literally, there's a plane that lands. The plane did land for me by the end. I was like, that was masterful storytelling, but it might not have been inclusive storytelling, right? And it might have left people behind.

SPEAKER_01

But it might be one like for me, like, oh, I need to go back and catch that again and see if I can you know pull more out of it.

SPEAKER_00

There were hints, there were probably hints. So the bread crumbs along the way, like here's what I'm doing. And after I watch it a second time, it's like, oh, he was letting me know it was non-sequential.

SPEAKER_01

And yeah, and I I sometimes don't like the flashback movie. Like when they start with the end, I'm like, oh, now I know what happens. Yeah, you know, there's something about that. I'm like, oh, and sometimes I'll make it through the movie, but that's gotten very popular too in the last decade or so.

SPEAKER_00

The show Netflix show the end or the middle and then come back to it. Yeah, yeah. So story is something that brings you life. You have a family? I do.

SPEAKER_01

You like them? Mostly, yeah, yeah. No, I love them. They're great. Yes, they are super.

SPEAKER_00

That's a huge source of joy for you. So you have your wife, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, one boy. Man now, 27 years old. He is a man on his own. Still a boy, not yet a man. You know, he's he's uh he's got boy boyishness to his life, like I do, I think. Boyish good looks, good looking guy. Oh gosh, yeah, yeah, I hate him. Oh gosh, it's a dream boat. He's so dreaming. Yeah, yeah. He is such a good looking kid, and yeah, but he's a good soul too. He's a good person and just funny and fun and just great to be around.

SPEAKER_00

So we're that feels amazing to have an adult son who like you like. Yes, I'm raised with these kids, and I'm gonna tell him. I'm not gonna like these guys as adults, I hope.

SPEAKER_01

And there's a lot of families that don't get that. So I I that's not lost on me.

SPEAKER_00

You guys are close, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. He lives like two blocks away from me. Oh man, that's the dream.

SPEAKER_00

If you like him, I guess it's not gonna be my dream if I don't like my kids or they don't like me.

SPEAKER_01

Really going out of going out of a state for college, dad. Oh, okay. Where? How far? You want to study abroad? Yeah, no, we've never liked that. He's been a homebuddy uh quite a bit, probably bad parenting on my part, not letting him not pushing him out of the nest far enough. But also, it was just a really good relationship, and I think we all know that. And he's an only child, so that adds to that, I think. It piles up that closeness. You got four, so you're like, yeah. Gotta spread that love out divided by four. You know, he gets it all.

SPEAKER_00

Or we just pick one. Or you picked up. We're gonna love you the best.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think figure it out. I think maybe it's your youngest. He he may get it all. He might, yeah. He's sweet, he sleeps well. That's the ticket. Yeah. Uh, and then your wife, Paula, yeah. Wonderful. Been married 30 I'll get it wrong, seven years. Yeah. It's a long time. Yeah. Well, I'm old. 42 years old, and you've been married 37 years. I know, I know. Weird, huh?

SPEAKER_00

Mm-hmm. Uh something I like about you guys right now, and because I think about future, and um, if we're gifted this future, my wife and I, and then our kids do either their homebody and they live two uh neighborhoods down or two streets down, or you'll get both.

SPEAKER_01

You'll probably get both.

SPEAKER_00

What do we still like each other? Do we still hang out? And so you guys, I like this. Last year, you got real into the WMBA. Well, yes, we I did.

SPEAKER_01

You guys have leak pass. I have, I did. I cancel it every time my team, the fever, loses, but I'm just one of those, you know, one of those fans.

SPEAKER_00

You had the Caitlin Clark get on the bandwagon.

SPEAKER_01

We did. I didn't mean to. Never have watched the W ever. I didn't Don't call it the W. I mean, that's when you know you're the insider when you're like, I've never watched the W. Me and the W. I've been to two games. I am games. I've been to two games.

SPEAKER_00

And we don't live, like, it's different if you live in a city where there's games. Right. You've traveled to go to games. Five hours. Five hours to go. Like you that's pilgrimage stuff. That's right. And that's your religion. You were into the city.

SPEAKER_01

Is with me on that. It's together. We're two.

SPEAKER_00

Do you guys have clothes?

SPEAKER_01

What's that?

SPEAKER_00

Do you have clothes?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. You mean like clothes?

SPEAKER_00

Like a shirt shirzy or jersey. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I have a I have like a fever, fever shirt that I wear to the game. Oh, only one. And she has maybe a couple. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, we're in. All in. You guys watched the when you had the pass. You'd yeah. I mean, it was appointment viewing the Friday night game. You guys would pop popcorn and watch it together.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. She sometimes she won't watch it anymore because she thinks she's bad luck. So she'll be in her office and be working, and then I'll be watching and then she'll hear me yell or something. Then she'll come out. What happened? It's like, well, stay in here. You know, it's that thing. You get that a lot. So yeah, the W's been good. It's been good. Really, really brought us some crazy weird joy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that's what I think. Like, joy, a lot of times when we look at it, it's always the big mountain thing. Whereas, like, I need to start a family and then I'll have joy. True. If you want to start a that's beautiful for some people, that's their journey. Yeah. But then there's like these like micro bursts too. And I think some of the micro bursts are just like, no offense.

SPEAKER_01

No, it's all right.

SPEAKER_00

But I'm going to take this thing that I know doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01

It doesn't matter at all.

SPEAKER_00

Like sports is that way. None of it really matters. Like I'm going to weep and cry on a Saturday if a football team does the thing or doesn't do a thing. And then in five years, I know I won't remember what exactly happened. Yeah. But there's something good about having some of those, I think, things that don't matter that you can like pour meaning to, but it's just kind of like it's lighter.

SPEAKER_01

This is this is just a really good way to decompress and do something that you yeah, you just have nothing to do with. I have no stake in this at all in life. Like I I do care, but I don't care.

SPEAKER_00

It's like fabricated care. It's the practice care for the things you do. And it's like caring without stakes. You can't only do that. That won't bring joy. But if you have a good joy base, you almost have to have some of these. I'm gonna get real into bowling for a year, and I bowling. It could happen. That's my bowling era or whatever, and you just have that and then you walk away from it, it's no big deal.

SPEAKER_01

I did that with the Chiefs a little bit, but I don't know. That kind of just run out I ran out of gas. I think Paula wasn't really into it too much. I still watch them, but you know, I don't know. It just kind of like when also they got really good and they won championships and you kind of had that goal met or something. I don't know. So that makes me a fair weather fan. But I one of the things that with the W, just to take it to that last, like, you gotta be kidding me. Um, we have gone to two games we went uh two years ago. Caitlin Clark was the connection from Iowa, where my wife went to University of Iowa, and somehow when they got really good that one or two years, we were like, oh, let's pay attention to this, and then we just followed her into the professional league. Anyway, we went to one game, saw her play. This past year she'd been hurt all year. So we didn't see her play, but we still went, and she was still there, and Sophie Cunningham was there, who's a Mizzou girl, and so that made it actually even better. Yeah, it's like, wait, we got a hometown girl on this team, too. The two schools that you have associations with that you care about. Yeah, so it's like, well, we got to do this anyway. We went to that game. I think they lost this year, they won last year. My wife was over in Indianapolis at a conference for something completely different. They were playing in the playoffs uh that Friday night. She was over there with one of her girlfriends, and they went to the fourth quarter of the game because they were they were getting blown out.

SPEAKER_00

Did they have to buy tickets? Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Oh man, full price? No. Okay, that's so here's what happened. They go, I I said they were in the hotel right across from the arena, and I said, You got you have to go take her. Um, take this gal. It's our Michigan friends. Take take this gal and go over there at the fourth quarter. They're probably everybody's probably leaving because they're getting blown out. She's like, No, no, no. Oh, they did it. And they got over there 90 bucks a ticket for one quarter. I said, buy it. Did they haggle? I don't know. I don't remember. She's like, she texted me, like, oh, it's too much. I said, do it. Do I ever tell you to spend money? No.

SPEAKER_00

I think that's one of those rare situations in life where you could be like, I'll give you $38 and just start it. I don't know that they haggled. They should have haggled. It's probably all automated and you can't, but it feels like that would be the last refuge of haggling in the American society is midway through the fourth quarter of a basketball game.

SPEAKER_01

What can you do for me? Yeah, that's right. And it's like this extra money if you're not going to build this ticket.

SPEAKER_00

No one else is lined up for this ticket for the last seven minutes of this basketball game.

SPEAKER_01

And they went and they had a great time, and then they stayed even longer afterwards, and they were like picking up these little cry towels or whatever that were around the and then they had uh some of the facilities people going, Oh, there's one over there, take that. So they're like, it's just it's so fun. I don't know why it was so fun to go to games there, but it just was. Yeah, it's awesome. For me, it was it's been a little bit better than going to the Mizzou games.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit. I think like you have to build your base of joy, happiness, whatever, on stuff that is foundational and matters. For you, I think it's like faith and family, like church, like these things you've really built. And so then you add these extras and they come and go, and they're just like life enhancers. There's like little, I don't know, just little burst. But then I think what a lot of us do is we never get the foundation, then we make stuff like that our foundation, and it can't hold the weight. And so it's me as a Mizzou fan going to a football game and that wrecking my week. Yeah, and no realizing, oh, okay, or it's me taking like faith or church. This happens with church a lot, where it's like that becomes my escapist thing I can leave, come and go when it's supposed to be like a foundational thing that stays. Very true, and I'm supposed to add around the edges of it, and the edge I don't delineate well uh among edge joys and foundational joys or something, but it feels like you guys have that, and that's why you can add, let's get the leak pass for a couple years.

SPEAKER_01

That's so dumb.

SPEAKER_00

And probably in five years, I bet you won't have that, but I bet you'll have something else. Probably like you'll visit every water park in America or something.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I did brakes this year, right? That was another thing.

SPEAKER_00

You learn how to fix people's brakes. You fixed my brakes once.

SPEAKER_01

I just threw it through that in there. I got tired of paying somebody else to do my brakes. So, like, I think I can do this, and yeah. That was crazy. I did like a dozen brakes this year.

SPEAKER_00

What's the C.S. Lewis thing? Surprised by Joy. Yeah. He wrote a memoir about meeting his wife, Joy. You could write a memoir about learning to change brakes.

SPEAKER_01

It could be, yeah. There yes. And it's again, what what made that different than the foundational things? It's so disconnected. I think that's it. It's just like, what am I doing here? I shouldn't be doing this. People do it with music, they learn to play the guitar on the side, they're not necessarily gonna use that for anything other than their own joy. Yeah, and you don't have to be great, you can still love it. And uh yeah, so it's similar to that. I do 15 minutes a night. Do you pretty much that's awesome? Well, you if you're if you do 15 minutes a night, you're gonna get good.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I'm already really good.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, I didn't know. You you kind of stuff your talents. I can play like six songs. You hold you, you hold back.

SPEAKER_00

Uh yeah. All right. That's cool. Yeah. Well, let me ask a final question. Um did we tell a good story? I think we did. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Only part of it though, what's amazing about the human experience is like you just got a sliver of my life or your life. Yeah. And that was still pretty interesting. Think about how many other things everyone has. Yep, chapters on chapters. Oh, just depends on your lens you're looking at in that conversation. And that's it.

SPEAKER_00

Like, too. Like how much sweeter would life be if we could learn to read? Like our literacy with people? Yeah. It's like that's why people aren't interesting because you don't know how to ask good questions or listen well to responses or be able to dig a little bit deeper. This is why like journalists probably have some advantage where it's like, man, that life is probably so fulfilling to really just be able to do that because you just have novels upon novels upon novels and stories upon stories upon stories.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. How can you write about the same thing again? Well, different angle, right? And and now it's new again. That's cool.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Hopefully, we're doing that here with this podcast. Usually I'm on the other side of the camera, and so it's fun. Yeah. Just did something different.

SPEAKER_00

That's right, leaned in. Yeah. Well, thank you for leaning in as well. This is a Fiercer Delight. We are on about every week. We got different guests, and we are pursuing a Fiercer Delight in our lives. I want that for mine. You probably want it too. So come back, listen in, uh, like us, subscribe, uh, send this to your friend, your aunt, to your friend. Uh, and special promotion right now, if you use code Damon, you can get a WNBA League Pass half off. Not really. Uh, but you can make it to the fourth part of the game and pay full price. Just use Damon as the code when you get there to the arena and they'll let you in. Thank you so much for joining us. We will talk to you next time.