Year: 2012

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Podcast: Look in Your Heart

Virtual Memories – season 2 episode 5
John B. – Look in Your Heart

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The May episode of The Virtual Memories Show is up and ready to go! This time around, my guest is John B., a pal of mine who died last year (but got better!)

There’s also a little rant about the publicity-industrial complex, the Avengers, the new book by Robert Caro, and the redemptive powers of a certain margarita-soaked musician.

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Credits: This episode’s music is tied into the conversation with John, so you’ll have to listen to the episode to find out what it is. I recorded the intro on a Blue Yeti mic, and the conversation with John was recorded on a pair of Blue Encore 100 mics, feeding into a Zoom H4N recorder. The conversation was recorded in an exhibit hall during a trade show, so getting the sound quality up to snuff was a little work.

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Bookbuys

Since we’re building a library downstairs and adding a bunch more shelf-space, I’m no longer quite so constrained in my book-buying. I’m still on an austerity plan for 2012, so I’ll generally only pick something up on the cheap. Here’s what I’ve bought lately and why.

AbeBooks

The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon – I’m planning to read this for a Secondhand Loves podcast with one of my old college pals. I detested it the first time I tried it, complaining, “If you write a novel about comic-book history, Jews in eastern Europe, escape artistry and the golem-myth and you lose me, you’ve seriously fucked up.” We’ll see if I’m still as uninto it. It cost me $2.62, plus shipping

The Last Leopard – David Gilmour – It’s the biography of Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, who wrote The Leopard, one of my favorite novels. Cost $6.75

The Anatomy of Influence – Harold Bloom – I’m sure I’ll spend a little time with it. $8.31

Labyrinth Books

I stopped in Princeton for lunch on the way home from a client visit in Philadelphia, so I hit Labyrinth, which used to be Micawber Books. I found a used copy of Little, Big for $12.74. Amy lent hers out, and I’m hoping to interview the author soon for the podcast, so I picked that up. Still, $12.74 is kinda high for a used paperback. I balanced things out by finding a backup hardcover of George, Being George for $2.

Raider

There was a street fair in Suffern, NY last weekend, as Amy & I discovered when going out to our favorite hole-in-the-wall taqueria in town. We meandered through that, and discovered a little used bookstore in the same building as the Lafayette theater, this great old movie house where I once saw The Empire Strikes Back. The stock wasn’t really my sorta thing, but then I noticed a copy of Mr. Crowley’s Four Freedoms for $4, so I picked that up.

The Strand

While staying in NYC for a conference last week, I hit up the Strand Bookstore on my last night, since my wife & I are content to do that sorta thing. I decided I wouldn’t buy anything over $10, but managed to get by without crossing the $8 barrier:

Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor – I read it in the big ol’ Library of America collected works last year, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a portable copy. $7.95

How Fiction Works – James Wood – I generally like his literary criticism and book reviews. $7.95

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City – Nick Flynn – My pal Elayne loved this one, and implored me to give it a shot. $7.50

The Lost Books of the Odyssey – Zachary Mason – Praised in a recent Five Books interview, I figured I’ll read it some weekend this summer. $5.95

Role Models – John Waters – I’ve always liked John Waters in theory much more than in practice, so I’m hoping the printed page works better for me than the movie/TV screen. $7.95

And that’s my recent book-buying binge. We’re still a few weeks away from having the library finished, but once it’s wrapped up, I’ll be sure to post a ton of pix.

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Baseball & Shakespeare Update

PDA conference in PHX done! Now to close the “Shakespeare plays read to ballparks visited” spread!

Shakespeare Plays Read

  1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  2. Antony & Cleopatra
  3. As You Like It
  4. Coriolanus
  5. Hamlet
  6. Henry IV I
  7. Henry IV II
  8. Henry V
  9. King Lear
  10. Macbeth
  11. Merchant of Venice
  12. Much Ado About Nothing
  13. Othello
  14. Richard II
  15. The Tempest
  16. Winter’s Tale

MLB Parks Visited

  1. A’s
  2. Angels
  3. Blue Jays
  4. Braves
  5. Diamondbacks
  6. Mariners
  7. Mets (old)
  8. Orioles
  9. Padres
  10. Phillies (old)
  11. Red Sox
  12. White Sox
  13. Yankees (old)

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April, Fool!

It’s been a long time, dear readers! Sorry for the absence, but I’ve been undergoing some strange anxiety/depression stuff for the past month, with no clue how to shake it. Part of it was work-related, with some work-worries waking me up at odd hours. To compensate for lost sleep, I fell back into my habit of adding a mid-morning coffee to my normal caffeine regimen. (I normally drink a 2-cup mug around 5 a.m. when I get up, and a 2-cup French press around 2 p.m.) My biochemistry started getting worse, of course, with more anxiety and less sleep, which compounded the need for coffee and . . .

That’s exactly how I ended up with heart palpitations that resulted in an ER visit last September. So I’ve been consciously cutting back the caffeine intake, and trying to get more sleep. And now, with my wife immersed in the season premiere of Game of Thrones, I figured it was about time I started writing things down again.

So: last month. I had a business trip to San Francisco that was pretty entertaining. I’d tell you more, but I’m planning to ramble about in the April installment of my podcast. Which may be delayed a little bit, but I promise it’ll come out this month (or your money back!). See, I’m really intent on getting at least one interview/conversation into each new podcast, and I’ve sorta failed at lining one up. But I’m going to see a pal of mine next weekend, and I think we can have a good conversation for the Virtual Memories Show.

In fact, this weekend I picked up some good microphones and a recorder so I can do remote interviews with good sound quality. So if I show up at your door with a Dopp kit, don’t be afraid that I’m planning to move in; I’m just making a temporary studio in your living room. (Speaking of: lemme know if you want to record a book-oriented conversation sometime!)

I guess the biggest news I have is that we’re building a library. I mean, I’ve been building a library for decades, but now we have a handyman in doing the actual building of a library. We’re taking two rooms downstairs — the rec room and “The Shack,” a guest bedroom where Dad used to keep his HAM radio stuff when we were growing up (short for “Radio Shack,” in other words) — building shelves into the walls above the foundation, tearing down the wall between ’em, installing lights, and putting in some Pergo faux-wood flooring.

I’d kindasorta wanted to do something like this for years, but it was only when Handyman Lou finished the first phase, installing and painting the bookcases in the rec room, that I really started to get excited. As I started taking my books off the multitude of Ikea Billy bookcases and organizing them on the new shelves, I thought, “This is going to be my home.” (It’ll also have a photo-studio area for Amy to use; no man-cave here.)

So, I suppose my anxiety about this stuff — having someone in the house a lot, having to trust that he’s going to do the job right, having to trust that I’m asking for the right thing — has also preyed on me. I took a couple of “before” pix, but I’ll wait on posting stuff till “after” is ready.

Anyway, that’s the tale I have to tell, I guess. Last week, Amy & I miscommunicated about when her train from NYC was going to arrive at the station in Radburn. As a result, I got there half an hour early. I considered driving over to Garden State Plaza and meandering around for 15-20 minutes, maybe looking at some clothes.

Instead, I drove in the other direction and hit Well Read, a nice indy bookstore in Hawthorne. I’d been doing well with my 2012 austerity plan (admittedly blown up by this weekend’s audio recorder / mics purchase), but all this shelf-space I’m about to gain left me thinking I could pick up some new books. I grabbed used copies of Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson, the subject of last month’s podcast) and Rabbit, Run (I’ve never read Updike) and a new copy of Inherent Vice, Pynchon’s stoner detective novel, which I’m enjoying. I suspect I’d enjoy it more if The Big Lebowski didn’t exist, but whatever.

What I’m saying is, I want a place to read, even if I have more books than I’ll ever get around to.

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Podcast: Good Housekeeping

Virtual Memories – season 2 episode 3
Ann Rivera – Good Housekeeping

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It’s time for a new episode of The Virtual Memories Show! I finally managed to get a guest to come all the way out to deepest, darkest New Jersey to record a conversation for this one!

Ann’s a 20-plus-year pal of mine from college, and I was happy to have her be my very first pod-guest! Our conversation was for a new segment on the show: Second Hand Books. The theme is that you tell me about a book or author you once hated but now adore. (Because it’s too easy to talk about books/authors you once loved but are now embarrassed by.)

Give this episode a listen, and if you have a book or author you wanna discuss on the show, drop me a line! I love to learn about how people’s literary tastes change and what those changes say about the way we grow. (No, I don’t have a very interesting life, I admit.)

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Credits: This episode’s music is Coralia, by Mark Adler, from the Henry & June soundtrack. In the comments, I’ll put a link to this episode’s m4a version, which has my cutesy headshot embedded. Let me know if you have trouble playing the files; I’m still figuring out how to optimize the audio and I’m not sure I’ve got the meta-data correct to file this stuff in iTunes.

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Alexandria via St. Louis

Virtual Memories – season 2 episode 2
Gil Roth – Burning Libraries

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Another month, another podcast! I told you I was trying to keep to some sorta schedule for 2012, so here’s the latest installment of the Virtual Memories Podcast!

I’m still working with both mic placement and amp effects, so I apologize in advance if you’ll need to turn up the volume a little to listen to it. I really oughtta take a class in this stuff, so I can get the technical aspects down, rather than hashing this stuff out every time.

Still, it’s another podcast! Enjoy!

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Credits: music from Rome, by Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi, feat. Norah Jones. The Five Books interview with Geoff Dyer can be found here. Here’s a link to the m4a version, in case you want the version that has my headshot and all.