2013 Podcast Countdown: #4

The podcast countdown continues! The 4th most downloaded episode from 2013 was #1 most nerve-wracking! It was my live podcast with cartoonist Ben Katchor!

#4 – Visible Cities: VMS Live with Ben Katchor – Ben Katchor is the guest for the first live recording (as in, in front of an audience of 50 or so people) of The Virtual Memories Show! Our conversation (and Q&A with the audience) covers Ben’s new collection of comics, Hand-Drying in America, his creative process, his relationship with technology, his non-nostalgic laments for lost urban totems, and more! (4/16/13) – mp3

I’d been after Ben for a while to do the show, and when he finally took me up on it, he insisted that we record it live at his New York Comics & Picture-stories Symposium. I had to run around to find some mic stands and I jury-rigged a setup that could record our conversation and also pick up the audience questions. I was pretty worried about how it would all work, but I had three different recorders going and we managed to get pretty good sound.

I was a pretty nervous about the public-speaking angle of it, but there were some friendly faces in the audience — like past guest R Sikoryak and upcoming guest Richard McGuire — and that made the whole experience a lot of fun. In fact, we’re talking about doing some live episodes with guests at the Symposium during 2014!

Now go listen to our #4 most downloaded episode from 2013! (and check out Hand-Drying in America while you’re at it!)

Check back tomorrow for #3! As ever, thanks to all my guests for the great conversations, and thank you, dear listeners, for each and every download!

#10-8 – Craig Gidney / Ed Hermance, Drew Friedman, Jesse Sheidlower

#7 – Willard Spiegelman

#6 – Pete Bagge

#5 – Lori Carson

And remember, you can find all our episodes at the podcast archive or by visiting iTunes! Wanna see pix of our guests? Check out the flickr set!

2013 Podcast Countdown: #6 in the Bagge

Hope you had a merry Christmas! I spent mine struggling to write a short story about two Jews trying to find somewhere to pray on Yom Kippur (with breaks for Dim Sum and a little basketball).

Our podcast countdown continues! The 6th most downloaded episode from 2013 was my conversation with legendary cartoonist Pete Bagge!

#6 – The Least Insane of Cartoonists – Peter Bagge, cartoonist/creator of Hate! joins us to talk about his new book, Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story. We have a great conversation about why he chose to write about the founder of Planned Parenthood, how he made the shift from fiction to nonfiction comics, who his favorite “pre-feminist feminists” are, why he stuck with comic books over paperback books for too long, what the strangest sketchbook request he ever received is, and why R. Crumb considered him the least insane of cartoonists. (10/15/13) – mp3

You want some behind-the-scenes stuff? Well, Pete & I recorded our talk at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD in September. And before we started recording, Also, I gave him a copy of The Leopard as a guest-gift (I try to do that for all the guests). I mentioned Visconti’s film version of it, which starred Burt Lancaster, and Bagge told me that Lancaster stars in his favorite movie, along with Tony Curtis: Sweet Smell of Success. I’d never seen it before, so I grabbed it on Netflix and WOW is it an amazing flick.

Now go listen to our #6 most downloaded episode from 2013! (and go watch Sweet Smell of Success sometime!)

Check back tomorrow for #5! I give thanks to all my guests for the great conversations, and I thank you, dear listeners, for each and every download! Have a great Boxing Day, if that’s your thing!

#10-8 – Craig Gidney / Ed Hermance, Drew Friedman, Jesse Sheidlower

#7 – Willard Spiegelman

And remember, you can find all our episodes at the podcast archive or by visiting iTunes!

2013 Podcast Countdown: #10-8

Sheesh! Only a week left in 2013? How’d that happen?

I went into 2013 with the goal of putting out a new podcast every other week. I managed to exceed that goal and even bumped up to a weekly schedule for the last quarter of the year. I’m pretty optimistic that I can sustain that in 2014, with an occasional week off.

I’ve got an extra-special (by my standards) episode of The Virtual Memories Show on tap for New Year’s Eve, but I thought we’d revisit the show’s most prolific year with a countdown of the top 10 most downloaded episodes.

I only had this countdown idea with 7 days left in the year, so let’s go with #s 8-10 in today’s post! I’ll post another top 10 episode each day until we reach Dec. 31:

#10 – The Importance of Being Out – It was our first double-episode of the year! First, Craig Gidney discussed his new YA/bullying novel, Bereft, which went on to be nominated for an NAACP Image Award, the Moonbeam Children’s Award and the Lambada Literary Award in YA. Then Ed Hermance talked about the history of Giovanni’s Room, his queer bookstore that’s celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2013. Later in the year, Ed looked to sell the store, but it looks like there are no takers, so this interview chronicles the end of an era. Lots of great conversation about writing, publishing and bookselling in this episode. (4/2/13) – mp3

#9 – Episode 21: The Guy Who Drew the Liver Spots Drew Friedman, the Vermeer of the Borscht Belt, the great painter, cartoonist,  and chronicler of modern fame (and infamy), invited me out to 2nd Ave. Deli in NYC one morning to record a conversation about art, show biz, R. Crumb, Joe Franklin, the Friars Club, Howard Stern, Abe Vigoda, the gallery show commemorating his books on Old Jewish Comedians, and more! It’s a fun conversation with someone who watched even more TV and read even more comic books as a kid than I did! (10/8/13) – mp3

#8 – Episode 9 – Putting the “Pro” in Profanity – Jesse Sheidlower, editor-at-large for the Oxford English Dictionary and author/editor of The F-Word, talks about the shifting idea of “offensive” language, how one becomes a lexicographer, the OED’s digital challenge, the history of Jesse’s Word, and more! (4/30/13) – mp3

Check back tomorrow for lucky #7! Thank you to all my guests for the great conversation, and thank you, dear listeners, for each and every download! And have a great Christmas, if that’s your thing!

You can find all our episodes at the podcast archive or by visiting iTunes!

Podcast: The Whimsical Barracuda

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 31 –
The Whimsical Barracuda

“With my brothers, it was like ‘Resistance is futile! You will enjoy horror movies! You will go to comic book conventions! You will learn to love B-movies and worship Tor Johnson and Plan 9 from Outer Space! Shemp Howard must be worshipped!’”

Kipp Friedman is the latest member of a comedic dynasty (so says the subtitle of his new memoir, Barracuda in the Attic). The son of novelist, journalist, playwright and screenwriter Bruce Jay Friedman and brother of cartoonist Drew Friedman and writer/musician Josh Alan Friedman, Kipp has tossed his hat into the ring with a book filled with tales of New York City in the 1960’s and ‘70s, of pop culture education, of living with his divorced dad during his days writing “The Lonely Guy” columns, and more!

“My father was so prolific for so many years as a writer, people would wonder why he never seemed to be working. And yet his stuff kept on being published. I think making it seem effortless rubbed off on his kids. We agonize over everything.”

While in NYC for a series of book readings, Kipp sat down to talk with me about Barracuda in the Attic (Fantagraphics Books), the joys of “growing up Friedman,” hunting for comics and Mad magazines with his brothers, what he misses about New York, what he’ll never forgive the Knicks for, how he ended up with a “real job,” and what it felt like to add a volume to the bookshelf of works by his family. It’s a wonderful perspective on the most creative family any of us will likely ever see!

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

Kipp Friedman is a native New Yorker who holds B.A.s in history and journalism from the Universit of Wisconsin-Madison. He began his career as a reporter for several newspapers in south Florida before moving to Wisconsin, where he worked in PR for GE Medical Systems, as marketing and PR director at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, and as a PR consultant for Jewish Family Services of Milwaukee. He is also a professional photographer and has shot more than 300 bar and bat mitzvahs (despite not having been bar mitzvah’d himself). He currently resides in Milwaukee with his wife, Anne. They have a grown son, Max, who is studying to be an architect. Barracuda in the Attic is his first book.

Credits: This episode’s music is When I Write a Book by Rockpile. The conversation was recorded at a hotel in SoHo on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. The intro and outro were recorded at home on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Kipp Friedman by me.

Podcast: The Show Must Go On

The Virtual Memories Show Must Go On, with Roger Langridge!

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 24 – The Show Must Go On

“We have to decide what sort of comics industry we want before we decide what sort of books we’re going to work on.”

Roger Langridge has become the best all-ages cartoonist in the business, despite (or because of) starting out in a “mature readers” indy-comics environment. He joins the Virtual Memories Show to talk about how he found that niche, his work on (and love of) The Muppets, Popeye, and Dr. Who, the responsibility of helping attract the next generation of comics readers, his lifetime love of vaudeville, his upbringing in New Zealand, how he learned to write his own stories, how he accidentally became a pioneer in webcomics, why he decided not to work with Marvel or DC anymore, and the one character from one of those companies that he’d love to work on. It’s a delightful conversation with one of the nicest guys in comics!

“I kept entering competitions to draw Popeye, and the prize was always the Robert Altman Popeye film, so I saw it about six times.”

Bonus: Here’s a piece I wrote about his amazing comic from the 1990s, Zoot!)

Rogerpopeye

“I’m not capable of drawing on model to save my life. I try my best to do that, but it always comes out looking like me.”

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

Subscribe to The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Roger Langridge has been producing comics for more than 25 years. Most recently, he has written and drawn Snarked!, Popeye, The Muppet Show and Thor: The Mighty Avenger. In collaboration with his brother Andrew, he drew Zoot! and Art D’Ecco, and his great solo work is the NCS, Ignatz, Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated comic book Fred the Clown. He recently (late 2011 is recent, right?) published The Show Must Go On, a collection of 20 years of his strips. He currently lives in London with his wife Sylvie, their two children and a box of his own hair.

Credits: This episode’s music is Mahna Mahna by Piero Umiliani. The conversation was recorded at the Bethesda North Marriott during SPX 2013 on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 mics feeding into 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 were done in Garage Band. Photo by me.

Podcast: The Least Insane of Cartoonists

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 22 –
Pete Bagge: The Least Insane of Cartoonists

“I was asking not to be taken seriously, but I was also getting annoyed that I wasn’t being taken seriously.”

WrebPeter Bagge, the comics legend behind Hate!, Neat Stuff, Apocalypse Nerd and Everybody is Stupid Except for Me, joins us to talk about his new book, Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story. We have a great conversation about why he chose to write about the founder of Planned Parenthood, how he made the shift from fiction to nonfiction comics, who his favorite “pre-feminist feminists” are, why he decided to stick with comic books over paperback books (and why he came around on the latter), what the strangest sketchbook request he ever received is, and how he feels about being a comics convention prostitute.

We also talk about how he never got a word of approval from his dad or his editor, how his libertarian politics got him ostracized after the 2008 election (and how some people seem to be coming around on that), why he doesn’t draw elbows, and what it felt like to be considered the “least insane of cartoonists” by R. Crumb.

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

Peter Bagge‘s newest book is Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story. He is best known for the 1990s comic book series Hate!, which followed the exploits of slacker ne’er-do-well Buddy Bradley (collected vols. 1, 2, and 3). He is a contributor to Reason magazine, which led to the collection Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me, and Other Acute Observations, and his work has appeared in Weirdo (where he served as managing editor), The Stranger, New York Press, Entertainment Weekly, Details, Seattle Weekly, Screw, and more. He is also the author of Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff, Reset, Apocalypse Nerd, Other Lives, and Bat Boy: The Weekly World News Comic Strips, among other works.

Credits: This episode’s music is Hateful Notebook by the Descendents. The conversation was recorded at the Bethesda North Marriott during SPX 2013 on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 mics feeding into 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 me.

Podcast: The Guy Who Drew the Liver Spots

Drew Friedman & Brisket on The Virtual Memories Show

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 21 –
The Guy Who Drew the Liver Spots

“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.”

by Jay Ruttenberg Photo of Drew Friedman and Jerry Lewis courtesy of Jay Ruttenberg

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

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.

Shaft’s Big Book Score

What with me being me, it’s tough to go without buying books for too long, although I’m in semi-austerity mode just now. I ordered a stack of books from Bookcloseouts.com last week, but still made a stop at the Barnes & Noble on Rt. 17 in Paramus, NJ today, to see if they have a copy of JL Carr’s A Month in the Country in their used section.

They don’t. Still, I picked up some other things, then came home to find the Bookcloseouts order had arrived.

So here’s today’s book score:

IMG_1239

Barnes & Noble

  • Open City – Teju Cole – $7 – Just ‘cuz. If I don’t dig it, I can give it to a book-reading pal.
  • Locas – Jaime Hernandez – $25 – Because one of my book-reading pals still has my copy of this enormous collection of Love & Rockets comics, and I’m afraid I’ll never get it back.

Bookcloseouts.com

I’ll likely hit the Montclair Book Center tomorrow afternoon to see about that JL Carr book. And get some barbecue at The Wood Pit.

Podcast: Readercon 2013 – Fairies and Zombies

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 15 –
Readercon – Fairies and Zombies

It’s time for a two-part mega-podcast! I visited the 24th annual Readercon, conference on literary fantasy & science fiction (or “imaginative literature,” as it’s known) in Burlington, MA in July, and came back with a ton of interviews! Readercon is a fantastic (ha-ha) event, with great programming, a good booksellers’ hall, and lots of fun conversation; you should make a point of attending it if your tastes run toward the authors who come up in this and the following episode.

I (not-so-wisely) conducted five interviews in one day so, rather than make a 3-hour episode, I decided to split them up between boys and girls. This time around you get interviews with authors John Crowley and Scott Edelman!

“The big books I’ve written have never had a genre at all. They were certain kinds of fictional possibilities that interested and intrigued me and that I wanted to try to achieve. I wouldn’t say there’s an awful lot in Little, Big that’s realistic, but there’s plenty that was based on my daily experiences of life in New York City.”

–John Crowley

John Crowley is the author of Little, Big (or, The Fairies’ Parliament), which I consider one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. I’d known about it for a long time, but only read it a few years ago, after learning that my wife has been re-reading it every year or two since it came out in paperback in 1983 or thereabouts. You should go read it now or wait for the deluxe edition from Incunabula Press! (He’s also written other amazing books, like the Aegypt cycle, Engine Summer, and more.)

I talked with Mr. Crowley about readers’ devotion Little, Big, the problems he faced in writing it and how surmounting them opened the doors to his subsequent books, how the fantasy genre developed during the course of his career, what his favorite imaginary books are, why I felt unprepared for our conversation despite having read six of his novels, and what it was like to write copy for Maidenform bras when he was starting out.

“One of the most amazing things about writing to me is that, even though you’ve read, and heard, and seen thousands of stories, when you sit down to write one, you have no idea how to begin!”

–John Crowley

Even if you haven’t read Little, Big, you’ll find this a fascinating conversation about the writing process, literary reputation, and what it means to tell a story!

“You have to write the things you love. They have to be extremely important to you, to give you that tingle when you read them. Because if you’re not moved by it, I don’t see how anyone else is going to be moved by it. . . .”

–Scott Edelman


Then I talk with Scott Edelman, a longtime writer, editor and Con-goer, about his zombie-fiction, being an editor at Marvel Comics in the 1970s, his storytelling tips and his pros and cons of workshops, whether he pays attention to literary markets, what Readercon means to him, and what it was like to move from one side of the convention table to the other.

“Why zombies? Because zombies are the closest we’ll ever see to what we’ll really become. Because there’ll be that day when we’re all walking husks without memory.”

–Scott Edelman

Enjoy the conversations! Then listen to part 2 of our Readercon conversations with Theodora Goss, Valya Dudycz Lupescu, and Nancy Hightower. Meanwhile, check out the archives for more great episodes!

Related episodes:

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

About our Guests

John Crowley lives in the hills above the Connecticut River in northern Massachusetts with his wife and twin daughters. He is the author of Little, Big, the four-volume Aegypt cycle, The Translator, Novelties & Souvenirs, Lord Byron’s Novel, and Four Freedoms. You can find out more about the special anniversary edition of Little, Big here.

Scott Edelman has published more than 75 short stories in magazines such as Postscripts, The Twilight Zone, Absolute Magnitude, Science Fiction Review and Fantasy Book, and in anthologies such as The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Crossroads, MetaHorror, Once Upon a Galaxy, Moon Shots, Mars Probes, Forbidden Planets. His poetry has appeared in Asimov’s, Amazing, Dreams and Nightmares, and others. What Will Come After, a collection of his zombie fiction, and What We Still Talk About, a collection of his science fiction stories, were both published in 2010. He has been a Stoker Award finalist five times, in the categories of both Short Story and Long Fiction. He is the editor of Blastr at the Syfy Channel. You can find more about him at his site.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fairy Tales by Style Council. Both conversations were recorded in a room at the Burlington Marriott on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 mics feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Blue Yeti into my Mac Mini, at my Ikeahack standing desk. File-splitting is done on a Mac Mini using Audacity. All editing and processing was done in Garage Band. Photos by me.