“I don’t like drawing young people, attractive people. I used to get assigned drawings of the cast of ‘Friends’ for Entertainment Weekly, and it was painful. I would finish a drawing of Jennifer Aniston, and to reward myself, I’d draw Shecky Greene.”
It’s the Vermeer of the Borscht Belt! Drew Friedman, the great painter, cartoonist, chronicler of modern fame (and infamy), and Howard Stern’s favorite artist, invited me out to 2nd Ave. Deli in NYC one Saturday morning to record a conversation about art, leaving New York, show biz, R. Crumb, Joe Franklin, Tor Johnson, the Friars Club, Howard Stern, Abe Vigoda, the gallery show commemorating his books on Old Jewish Comedians, and his upcoming book of portraits on comic-book legends (as in ‘artists, writers and publishers’). We also talk about how Harry Einstein died during a roast for Lucy and Desi, trade Gilbert Gottfried stories, discuss the state of the illustration market, explore why he used stippling effects and why he stopped, and more. This one’s a lot of fun. Go listen!
“There’s a theory about why there were so many Jewish comedians: the smile behind the pain, the haunted smile. I don’t buy into it. I think they’re all just a bunch of hams. They like to be up there, telling jokes, being funny, and meeting women.”
Photo of Drew Friedman and Jerry Lewis courtesy of Jay Ruttenberg
Drew Friedman is an award-winning illustrator, cartoonist and painter. His work has appeared in Raw, Weirdo, SPY, National Lampoon, Snarf, The New York Times, MAD, The New Yorker, BLAB!, The New York Observer, The Wall Street Journal, HONK!, Rolling Stone, Field & Stream, TIME, The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, and more. His comics and illustrations have been collected in several volumes, the latest, Too Soon?, published by Fantagraphics in 2010. His collection of portraits, Drew Friedman’s Sideshow Freaks, was published by Blast books in 2011. He has published three collections of paintings of Old Jewish Comedians (1, 2 and 3), but none of Old Episcopal Comedians. He also raises champion beagles with his wife, K. Bidus. You can find his full bio and buy his art at his fine art prints site and you really should read his blog.
Credits: This episode’s music is Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals by Raymond Scott. The conversation was recorded at the 2nd Ave. Deli in Manhattan on a Zoom H4n recorder. The intro and outro were recorded in my home office on a Blue Yeti USB microphone. File-splitting is done on a Mac Mini using Audacity. All editing and processing was done in Garage Band. Photo by a waiter at 2nd Ave. Deli.
Jonathan Hyman is the first guest of our two-part 9/11 special! Jonathan began photographing 9/11 murals, tattoos and other memorials immediately after the attacks and continued the project for 10 years, amassing a collection of 20,000 photos, as well as field notes and interviews. (We first met when a mutual pal told him about my 9/11 tattoo.)
University of Texas Press recently published a collection of critical essays about Jonathan’s work, The Landscapes of 9/11: A Photographer’s Journey. The book includes more than 100 of his amazing photos, including 32 pages in color (so you can see this guy in full splendor). Jonathan co-edited the book (along with professors Edward T. Linenthal and Christiane Gruber), and wrote one of the essays as well as all of the captions.
We had a fantastic conversation about his decade-long project, the notion of these mementos mori as American folk art, the reticence of non-New Yorkers to let him photograph them, his own 9/11 experience, how he became a photographer, and his struggle to keep this work from defining him as a person.
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Part 2 of the 9/11 special will go up on Sept. 10, featuring a conversation with author and law professor Thane Rosenbaum on revenge!
Jonathan Hyman is a freelance photographer and Associate Director for Conflict and Visual Culture Initiatives at the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College. A graduate of Rutgers University, he earned his Master’s degree in Fine Art from Hunter College in New York City where he studied painting and photography. At Hunter he was an Eagelson Scholar and a Somerville Art Prize recipient. His main areas of interest include memory, memorialization, social class, the American funerary tradition, vernacular and folk art, and public speech. He has lectured widely in the U.S. and Europe about his work and experience documenting the folk art made in response to the 9/11 attacks. His photographs have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, the National Constitution Center, the Duke University Library, and the Wald/Kim Gallery in New York City Hyman’s work has been published in Time magazine, the New York Times, and featured on television on the PBS NewsHour and other print and online media outlets in the U.S. and Europe. He lives in the upstate community of Bethel, New York, with his wife, Gail, daughter Jane, and German Shorthaired Pointer, Quincy.
Credits: This episode’s music is America by David Bowie (covering Simon & Garfunkel). The conversation was recorded in Jonathan’s studio in Smallwood, NY on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 mics feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. There was some trouble with mic placement, so I apologize for all the plosives. I tweaked the EQ to try to reduce them without damaging the overall quality of Jonathan’s conversation. The intro and outro were recorded in my home office on a Blue Yeti USB microphone. File-splitting is done on a Mac Mini using Audacity. All editing and processing was done in Garage Band. Top photo copyright Jonathan Hyman. Photo of Jonathan by me.
Here’s a picture from my trip to the Art Institute of Chicago last month.
It’s Le silence, by Auguste Preault. You can click through it for more information. If I ever publish a book, that’d make for a good cover.
I’m just finishing up some revisions on the short story that that trip inspired. Put a dollar (or more) in the tip jar (that donation button on the right side of the page) and I’ll send you a PDF of it.
“My impulse is to break the windows of Starbucks, but I’d get arrested if I did that, so I make comics about people breaking the windows of Starbucks.”
Cartoonist and MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship winner Ben Katchor joins us for the first live episode of The Virtual Memories Show (in conjunction with the New York Comics & Picture-stories Symposium). Ben & host Gil Roth talk in front of — and take questions from — an audience of 50 or so about Ben’s career in cartooning, including his new book, Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories (Pantheon), which collects his monthly comic page from Metropolis magazine. During the episode, Ben even performs several of his comics. If you’d like to see the comics themselves, you can download Manumission Houses and Lossless Things.
“People ask about influences and where I get my ideas. A lot of people looked at all the stuff I looked at, and they’re doing something else. It’s not like there’s an equation, like you read Saul Bellow and you look at Poussin, and then you make my comics. It’s not an equation. It’s brute force.”
The conversation and Q&A also cover his work process (with a surprising revelation about how he draws!), how book publishing lost its identity, what he learned from working in other art forms (like musical theater), how he teaches cartooning, the allure of new technologies, his one critical audience demographic, the joy of imperfections, whether he has an ideal era for New York, what happened to his History of the Dairy Restaurant book, how fear of shame keeps him productive, how Google can help when you need to draw a Russian prostitute, what he picked up from the Yiddish humor strips he read as a child, which one book the Library of America should withdraw, and how to pronounce “Knipl”! He didn’t win a “Genius” grant for nothing!
“It’s a golden age of art comics. It didn’t exist when I started. Most bookstores wouldn’t carry a comic, or even something that looked like a comic, back then. I can’t imagine what it must be like for a young cartoonist now, when these things are taken seriously and there’s an audience for them.”
Ben Katchor’s picture-stories appear in Metropolis magazine. His most recent collection of monthly strips, Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories, was published in March 2013 by Pantheon Books. Up From the Stacks, his most recent music-theater collaboration with Mark Mulcahy, was commissioned in 2011 by the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library and Lincoln Center and was performed at both venues. He is an Associate Professor at Parsons, The New School for Design in New York City. For more information, visit www.katchor.com.
Credits: This episode’s music is Big City Blues by Sun Ra and his Arkestra. The conversation was recorded in the Bark Room at The New School in NYC on a pair of AT2020 mics, feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. Mr. Katchor’s readings and some of the questions from the audience were recorded on a second Zoom H4n. I recorded the intro and outro on a Blue Yeti USB mic into Audacity. All editing and processing was done in Garage Band. Photo by Amy Roth.
It’s time for the last Virtual Memories Show podcast of the year! This time around, we interview Kyle Cassidy, an amazing photographer based in west Philadelphia.
As he puts it in his bio, “Kyle Cassidy has been documenting American culture since the 1990’s. He has photographed Goths, Punks, Cutters, Politicians, Metalheads, Dominatrices, Scholars, and Alternative Fashion, in addition to less prosaic subjects. In recent years his projects have extended abroad to Romania, where he captured the lives of homeless orphans living in sewers; and to Egypt, where he reported on contemporary archaeological excavations.”
Kyle’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair (DE), the Sunday Times of London, Marie Claire, Photographers Forum, Asleep by Dawn, Gothic Beauty and a ton of other publications. He recently published War Paint: Tattoo Culture & the Armed Forces. In 2007, he published Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes. We spoke one day after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, so our conversation began with a discussion of gun culture(s) in America.
“Guns are a huge part of many people’s lives, and have been from the beginning. I think it’s going to be very difficult for someone to convince lots of Americans that this is something they need to stop.”
Trust me: the conversation moves on to lighter topics after that, including how he discovered his next big project, Where I Write: Fantasy & Science Fiction Authors in Their Creative Spaces. We also talk about roller derby, fan cultures, the breakdown of discourse, how he got started in photojournalism, his most hated digital photography tricks, and whether he owns a gun, among other topics.
There are a lot more bad pictures out there, but there are a lot more good pictures out there, and there are a lot more things being covered that weren’t covered before. It’s a very good thing.
(Also, you may notice a certain vibrating noise that rises and falls during the show. That would be the purring of Kyle’s cat, Roswell, who joined us for several stretches of the episode. She also horked up something like a hairball at one point. I found it difficult not to break out laughing when she crawled into Kyle’s wife’s microphone box to watch us.)
The Virtual Memories Show is on iTunes! If you’d like to subscribe, visit our iTunes page!
If you’d like to check out past episodes, you can find us on iTunes or visit the Podcast page for all our back episodes, as well as e-mail signup and tip jar! And why don’t you friend the Virtual Memories Show at our Facebook page? It’d make my mom happy.
As I wrote at the top, this is the last episode of 2012. I’ve got some good guests planned for next year, and I’m hoping to get the show up to a reliable twice-monthly schedule. Thanks for supporting the show, and drop me a line if you have any suggestions for guests or topics you’d like to see me cover.
Credits: This episode’s music is Gun by The Golden Palominos. I recorded the intro on a Blue Yeti mic into Audacity, and the conversation was recorded in Mr. Cassidy’s home in Philadelphia, on a pair of AT2020 mics, feeding into a Zoom H4N recorder. All editing and processing was done in Garage Band. Photo courtesy of Valya Dudycz Lupescu.
It’s time for a (somewhat) long-delayed new episode of The Virtual Memories Show!
“Picasso said that the way you draw your circle is your style.”
This time, postmodern cartoonist Bob Sikoryak talks about the high/low mashups of his amazing book, Masterpiece Comics, the 1980’s art scene in NYC, the sea change in the acceptance of comics as art and entertainment, the (un)importance of having an individual drawing style, and more!
“It’s amazing to me how comics artists can speak to a generation, and that’s it. When you make something, it’s of your time, no matter what you do.”
We also reflect on the art of mimicry, the history of popular art, and who decides when it’s too soon to goof on Dostoevsky. I’ve been a fan of his work since I first read his Inferno Joe strip in 1989, so getting the chance to sit down with Bob for a conversation was a joy. (He’s the sweetest person I’ve met in comics.)
“My roommate in college said, “If you keep reading those comics, it’s gonna affect your style,” and clearly he was right.”
R. Sikoryak has drawn cartoons for numerous media giants, including Nickelodeon Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as well as for independent publications, films and theater productions. His cartoon slideshow series Carousel has been presented around the U.S. and Canada. He also teaches and lectures on comics and illustration. He lives in NYC with his wife and frequent collaborator Kriota Willberg.
This episode is sponsored by Out of Print Clothing! Visit their site and check out their great selection of T-shirts, fleeces, bags and other gear featuring gorgeous and iconic book cover designs.
The Virtual Memories Show is on iTunes! If you’d like to subscribe, visit our iTunes page!
If you’d like to check out past episodes, you can find us on iTunes or visit the Podcast page for all our back episodes, as well as e-mail signup and tip jar! And why don’t you friend the Virtual Memories Show at our Facebook page? It’d make my mom happy.
Credits: This episode’s music is Ambicion Eterna by Thievery Corporation. I recorded the intro on a Blue Yeti mic into Audacity, and the conversation with was recorded in Mr. Sikoryak’s home in Stuy Town in NYC, on a pair of Blue Encore 100 mics, feeding into a Zoom H4N recorder. All editing was done in Garage Band, with some post-processing in Audaity.
The July episode of The Virtual Memories Show is ready to go! This time around, you get two interviews for the price of one!
During my June trip to Boston for the BIO annual meeting, I recorded conversations with Diana Renn, a writer who just published her first book, a YA novel called Tokyo Heist, and Paul Di Filippo, a science fiction writer and critic who’s celebrating his 30th year as a freelance writer.
I thought of posting them as two separate podcasts, but it made more sense to have the perspectives of the first-time novelist and the life-time writer in a single episode. Diana has lots to say about working through the novel-writing process and how her history with comic books informs her, while Paul has a ton to say about the current state of science fiction, how he carved out a role in it, what it’s like to be the “King of Steampunk,” the allure of Providence, RI, and whether he’d have taken an assignment for the Before Watchmen series.
Credits: This episode’s music is Rewrite from Paul Simon’s recent record So Beautiful or So What? I recorded the intro on a Blue Yeti mic into Audacity, and the conversation with was recorded on a pair of Blue Encore 100 mics, feeding into a Zoom H4N recorder.
It’s time for another month’s worth of my tweets from twitter! First the retweets (the ones that begin with RT) and then the marginally more original ones! Remember, you can get these regularly by following groth18!
In honor of July 4th, we’ll start off with a bang!
#Shelfporn! (we have too many books for any of these configurations, but they remain awesome!)
* * *
I really need to read The Leopard somedamntime, don’t I? #lampedusa (I read the Leopard a few weeks later, and it’s rapidly ascended to the top 5 of my favorite novels.)
Photo of Drew Friedman and Jerry Lewis courtesy of Jay Ruttenberg 
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