Tag John Porcellino

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Episode 219 – Keiler Roberts

May 22, ’17 8:14 PM

Virtual Memories Show 219: Keiler Roberts

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“My drawing is as close as it can be to my handwriting. It’s what comes out without too much thought.”

Cartoonist Keiler Roberts joins the show to talk about her new book, Sunburning (Koyama Press). Oh, and parenthood, bipolar disorder, the avoidance of style, learning art while teaching art, making snap judgements about parents, having the world’s worst wedding photos, the temptation of shaping real life to generate a good story, trimming a 150-page memoir down to 12 pages, and why she cried when she got a blurb from Roz Chast! Give it a listen! And go buy Sunburning!

“My parenting advice is: lower your expectations for your kids and don’t make them feel special.” (I think she was joking.)

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

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About our Guest

Keiler Roberts’ autobiographical comic series Powdered Milk has received an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Series and was included in the The Best American Comics 2016. Her work has been published in The Chicago Reader, Mutha Magazine, Nat. Brut, Darling Sleeper, Newcity, and several anthologies. Her new book is Sunburning, from Koyama Press.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Toronto Marriott on Bloor during TCAF 2017 weekend on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Keiler and Summer Pierre by me. It’s on my instagram.

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Podcast – Creativity on Demand

Dec 9, ’14 8:50 AM

Virtual Memories Show:
Kaz –
Creativity on Demand

“When I started Underworld, there were a lot of comics coming out that were autobiographical and depressing; anything but funny. I decided I was gonna be a little different. I was gonna be the Ernie Bushmiller of underground comics.”

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Kaz joins The Virtual Memories Show

From Rahway to Hollywood, by way of Underworld! Kaz joins the show to talk about his career(s) as a cartoonist, animator and artist. We talk about how he fell in love with the collaborative aspect of animation (and how the SpongeBob Squarepants sausage gets made), how the world caught up to the outrageous depravity of his Underworld comic strip, how Art Spiegelman taught him to be an artistic magpie, how he may have made Mark Beyer cry, how it felt to show his parents his work in an issue of Al Goldstein’s Screw, how he learned to make a story turn funny, and what it’s like to supply creativity on demand, and more! Give it a listen!

“I didn’t make any distinction between getting published in Swank and getting published in The New Yorker.”

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Kaz joins The Virtual Memories Show

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

Kaz was born in Hoboken, New Jersey and started drawing comics for Art Spiegelman’s Raw Magazine while still in art school. As an illustrator and cartoonist he’s contributed to many magazines over the years (from Entertainment Weekly to The New Yorker) and started his weekly comic strip, Underworld, in The New York Press. There have been 5 published Underworld collections and editions published around the world. In 2001 Kaz joined the crew of SpongeBob SquarePants as a writer and storyboard director. That lead to his work on Cartoon Network’s Camp Lazlo, where he won an Emmy for writing, and Disney’s Phineas and Ferb where he was nominated this year for an Emmy. Kaz is currently working in Disney TV development and in January will rejoin the crew of Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob Squarepants as a staff writer. The end of 2015 will see Fantagraphics publish a hardcover collection of Underworld comics titled The Book Of Underworld.

Credits: This episode’s music is Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles by Captain Beefheart. The conversation was recorded in Kaz’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. Photos of Kaz by me.

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Podcast – 35 Cents & a Stamp

Oct 13, ’14 8:37 PM

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 – A Sense of Someplace To Go

Oct 6, ’14 7:56 PM

Virtual Memories Show: Dmitry Samarov –
A Sense of Someplace To Go

“The great [storytelling] advantage to driving a cab is that you have the back of your head to the person. It makes them open up in a way that, if they saw my face, I don’t think they could have. Then they would have had to reckon with me as a person, and I really wasn’t a person to most of them.”

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This podcast often hangs out at the intersection of art and commerce, so I was happy when Dmitry Samarov drove up in a cab with his sketchbook!* Dmitry recently published Where To?: A Hack Memoir (Curbside Splendor Press), his second book of essays and art about his experiences behind the wheel of a taxi in Chicago and Boston. We talk about that job vis-a-vis his fine arts background, his compulsion to chronicle his working life in words and images, how he made the transition from ‘zine to blog to book deal, how John Hodgman helped him get his break into publishing, what it’s like to run a website built in 2004, why he fled Parsons School of Design after one semester, and how it felt to leave the cab-driving world behind.

Dmitry Samarov Taxis in to The Virtual Memories Show

We also talk about his family’s emigration from the Soviet Union when he was a child (and his affinity for The Americans), what it was like to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with Chris Ware, and why he hates Boston with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Most importantly, we find out what an appropriate tip is for a cab-ride! That’s worth the price of admission by itself!

* Actually, I drove out to Newark Airport to pick up Dmitry on his book tour

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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

Dmitry Samarov was born in Moscow, USSR, in 1970. He emigrated to the United States with his family in 1978. He got in trouble in first grade for doodling on his Lenin Red Star pin and hasn’t stopped doodling since. After a false start at Parsons School of Design in New York, he graduated with a BFA in painting at printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993. Upon graduation he promptly began driving a cab — first in Boston, then after a time, in Chicago. He is the author of two books, Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab, and Where To?: A Hack Memoir. You should go watch five teaser clips of the Chicago Hack series (dir. John McNaughton), which use Dmitry’s art and writing for a half-hour scripted TV series. You should also check out his paintings, and maybe buy some.

Credits: This episode’s music is A Nice Piece For Orchestra by Bernard Herrmann (from the Taxi Driver soundtrack, duh). The conversation was recorded at Chez Virtual Memories 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. Samarov by me.

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