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Podcast – Look Day

Virtual Memories Show:
Sam Gross – Look Day

“One thing I tell young cartoonists: a magazine is like going out on a date, and a book is like getting married. If you’re going out on a date, you don’t need a lawyer. If you’re doing a book, you get a lawyer.”

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Sam Gross’ gag panels warped me at a young age, so it was an honor to get him on mic to talk about his nearly six-decade cartooning career. We sat down in his studio to discuss the serious business of gags, how he went from drawing a Saul Steinberg nose to drawing a Sam Gross one, how he continues in his 80s to come up with a week’s worth of new gags for Look Day, how he once got a Vanishing New York tour from Charles Addams, how he revels in the “humor of the handicapped”, and the magazine he misses the most. Give it a listen!

“I don’t know where I’m gonna go next. I’m not a finished product.”

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Sam Gross on the Virtual Memories Show

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:

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About our Guest

Sam Gross has been publishing cartoons since the 1950s. His cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker since 1969. He served as the cartoon editor of National Lampoon and Parents magazines, and was president of the Cartoonists Guild. He has published numerous collections, including I Am Blind and My Dog is Dead. You can buy reproductions of his art at the Conde Nast Store.

Sam in his studio, October 11, 2014

Credits: This episode’s music is Funny Little Frog by Belle & Sebastian. The conversation was recorded at Mr. Gross’ studio on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. The intro and outro were recorded on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Mr. Gross by me.

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Podcast – Much Abides

Virtual Memories Show:
Ashton Applewhite – Much Abides

“Knowing that things are finite gives life meaning. Avoiding mortality means you’re avoiding living, not avoiding dying. Aging is living.”

Ashton Applewhite on The Virtual Memories Show

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Ashton Applewhite is on a crusade against ageism (lack of gray hair notwithstanding). She joins the show to discuss the myths and roots of ageism and her talk series, This Chair Rocks. We also discuss her Yo Is This Ageist site, why she scoffs at the Life Extension crew, how her critique of ageism intertwines with her critique of capitalism, what it’s like to suffer from analexophobia, why we should all consider ourselves old people in training, and how she launched the Truly Tasteless Jokes empire. Give it a listen!

And if you’re in NYC, you can go hear Ashton’s This Chair Rocks talk on October 27! Details here!

Bonus: my yearbook picture from 1989!

“It drives me crazy when I get the AARP bulletin and the only gray-haired person in it is Bill Clinton.”

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Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:

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About our Guest

The voice of This Chair Rocks and Yo Is This Ageist, Ashton Applewhite is a Knight Fellow, a New York Times Fellow, and a Columbia Journalism School Age Boom Fellow. She is the author of Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well, media liaison to the board of the Council on Contemporary Families, and a staff writer at the American Museum of Natural History.

Credits: This episode’s music is Golden Years by David Bowie (it was either that or Never Get Old). The conversation was recorded at Ms. Applewhite’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. The intro and outro were recorded on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Ms. Applewhite by me.

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Podcast – 35 Cents & a Stamp

Virtual Memories Show: John Porcellino –
35 Cents & A Stamp

“I managed to go 43 issues before I hit the paralyzing grip of self-doubt and self-consciousness [from realizing that I had an audience]. I feel lucky that I had all those years to write comics in essentially a vacuum. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be 20 years old and trying to write comics in this world with the internet’s immediate response.”

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John Porcellino on The Virtual Memories Show

John Porcellino has been publishing his King-Cat Comics & Stories mini-comics for 25 years, but I managed not to check them out until last month. BIG mistake on my part! Turns out the critics were right; John P.’s one of the best autobio cartoonists out there, as well as “a master at miniature poignance” (Entertainment Weekly). We sat down at SPX 2014 to talk about publishing his new work, The Hospital Suite, as a standalone book and developing the skill and courage to tackle longer stories, his disdain for “the culture of like”, overcoming the shame and stigma of his OCD, the process of discovering an audience for his work, the pitfalls of autobiographical comics, discovering the power of negative space, turning his life into a narrative, how comics enabled him to communicate with people, and, most importantly, being an NFL bigamist. Give it a listen!

“If things didn’t get better, I was going to be the guy wandering down an alley in my underwear with tinfoil wrapped around my arms.”

Bonus: Roger Langridge gives us a few minutes at SPX to talk about his new book, Jim Henson’s The Musical Monsters of Turkey Hollow!

“To me, the best cartooning is the kind that has in place what needs to be there: nothing more and nothing less.”

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Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:

Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

John Porcellino was born in Chicago in 1968, and began drawing and writing at an early age, compiling his work into handmade booklets. His acclaimed self-published zine, King-Cat Comics and Stories, begun in 1989, has found a devoted worldwide audience and is one of the most influential comics of the past 25 years. His newest book is The Hospital Suite, and he is the subject of a new documentary, Root Hog or Die. His work has been collected in several editions, including King-Cat Classix, Map of My Heart, Perfect Example, and Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man. He is also the author of Thoreau at Walden and The Next Day: A Graphic Novella.

Credits: This episode’s music is Theater is the Life of You by The Minutement (John’s a fan). The conversation was recorded at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. The intro and outro were recorded on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Mr. Porcellino by me.

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Podcast – May God Remember

Virtual Memories Show: Daniel Goldhagen –
May God Remember

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“The phenomenon of antisemitism in areas where no Jews are present has no parallel, and it shows this is an extremely deeply seated and broad cultural construct, first in Christianity and then in Islam. . . . These notions have and continue to spread antisemitism around the world.”

Daniel Goldhagen on The Virtual Memories Show

During the middle of the High Holidays, two Jews sit down in Manhattan to talk about antisemitism! Daniel Goldhagen joins the show to talk about his newest book, The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism. We discuss the public expression of antisemitism and why it’s permitted in so many regions (and why it’s not in America), how it’s progressed through medieval, modern and global phases, how Jews have been able to survive millennia of ill-treatment, why “eliminationism” is a better term than “genocide”, and how a guy who writes books on topics like this manages to stay upbeat.

“People in Germany don’t look at Jews anymore and see devils in human form. That’s progress.”

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Along the way, we also talk about the Goldhagen family business, Daniel’s writing routine (which fills me with shame), what it’s like to be the first topic that comes up when you search “genocide” on YouTube, and what the man behind The Goldhagen Debate thinks about the adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

The episode also includes my tribute to DG Myers, who died the previous weekend. Go visit his site to learn more about his life, death, and donations you can make in his honor.

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:

Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, a former professor at Harvard University, is the author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, and Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity, in addition to The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New Republic, and newspapers around the world. There’s a much more extensive bio available at his website.

Credits: This episode’s music is First We Take Manhattan by Jennifer Warnes (in tribute to DG Myers). The conversation was recorded at Mr. Goldhagen’s rather echo-y home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. The intro and outro were recorded on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Mr. Goldhagen by me.

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What profit is there from my death?

The professor, scholar, literary historian, husband and father D.G. Myers died yesterday, after a long bout with prostate cancer. Last March, we recorded what may be my favorite episode of the podcast. You can listen to it here:

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I just wrote this for a tribute festschrift being collected by Patrick Kurp. My condolences to his wife and family and everyone else whose life he touched.

* * *

dgmyersI’d enjoyed D.G. Myers’ writing on books, culture and religion for years, and when I learned that he was suffering from terminal cancer, I sheepishly asked him if he’d be interested in recording a conversation with me for my podcast. I was surprised when he assented, thinking, “If I knew I only had a year or so to live, the last thing thing I’d want to do is waste a few hours talking to someone like me.”

I flew to Columbus, OH last March and we sat down in his home on a Sunday afternoon to record what turned out to be one of the best conversations I’ve ever had (on- or off-mic). We recorded for 90 minutes, then kept going for the next two hours, before his fatigue overcame him. He quickly allayed my worries about taking up his precious time; having a good conversation was more valuable to him than brooding over his health.

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked in the door, but I certainly wasn’t prepared for David’s hospitality, his gregariousness, the vivacity that he mustered in the midst of his suffering. That afternoon, we joyously talked books, religion, work, family, his childhood, criticism, creative writing, and more, all within the shadow of his dying. He told me his biggest regret was never getting to visit Israel. His literary bucket list included Anna Karenina.

As is my practice, I snapped a picture of him sitting at the table during the podcast. He’s weathered and gaunt, his shoulders slanted. A gray fedora covers the head rendered bald by chemotherapy. A copy of his book, The Elephants Teach, is on the table in front of him. In the background, on the wall, is a collection of photos of his family. He was so taken by that picture that he made it his Twitter avatar. I can’t reconcile the man in that photo with earlier ones I’ve seen of him, but that’s who he is to me.

During our talk, he said, “Every Shabbos I thank Hashem for my cancer, because it has focused me on what’s good and enabled me to ignore what’s not.”

I haven’t looked at life the same way since we spoke. I’ll treasure that afternoon for the rest of my days.

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Podcast – Time’s Bomb

Virtual Memories Show: Nina Bunjevac –
Time’s Bomb

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“Fatherland is really about who my father was, getting to understand him, and also an attempt to explain how politics can tear a family apart, just like they tore apart the people of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.”

Nina B!

fatherlandNina Bunjevac‘s new book, Fatherland, explores her family’s fractured history against the backdrop of 20th century Yugoslavia. We talk about how she left her country in 1990 only to find that it wasn’t there when she went back. We also explore the risks and challenges of researching a terrorist organization, the comics tradition in Yugoslavia and her own comics history, Serbia’s culture of friendship, why the Toronto Comic Arts Festival is the best comics event in North America, how I discovered her first book, Heartless, the perils of too much stippling, why it was controversial to publish Fatherland in Serbian dialect in Croatia, and more.

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“When I got to Canada when I was 16, I saw an issue of Raw, and that pretty much did it.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:

Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

ninab-3DavidHaweNina Bunjevac started her art training in Yugoslavia, at the Djordje Krstic School for Applied Arts; in 1990 she moved to Toronto, Canada, where she continued her studies in art at the Art Centre of Central Technical School; in 1997 she graduated from OCAD in the Drawing and Painting department. Formerly a painter, a sculptor and an art teacher, Nina found her calling in sequential arts, a form that seemed to naturally evolve out of the narrative component in her sculpture installation work. Pen and ink became her medium of choice.

Nina’s comics have appeared in a number of local and international publications: Komikaze (Croatia), Black (Italy), GIUDA (Italy), Stripburger (Slovenia), Zone 5300 (Netherlands), Stripolis (Serbia), ArtReview (UK), Asiatroma/Le Dernier Cri (France), Broken Pencil, Exile, Taddle Creek (Canada) and Mineshaft (USA). Her debut collection of comics, Heartless, came out in September 2012 with the Nova Scotia-based publisher Conundrum Press, and was translated and published in France in 2013 by Ici-même Editions. In 2011 Nina received The Golden Pen of Belgrade at the 11th International Biennale of Illustration in Belgrade for the cover image of Balkan Women in Comics (Fibra/Croatia); in 2013 she received The Doug Wright Award in the Spotlight category, also known as The Nipper, for Heartless.

Fatherland: A Family History comes out this month in Canada from Cape Graphic/Random House and will be released in the U.S. in January 2015.

Photo of Nina Bunjevac by David Hawe.

Credits: This episode’s music is Bomba by King Africa (I make no apologies). The conversation was recorded at the Marriott Bloor in Toronto on a Zoom H2n digital recorder (because there was a power supply problem that caused a weird reverb on my main recorder). The intro and outro were recorded on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Ms. Bunjevac and me by Amy Roth.