Tag: Malcolm Margolin

Posted on

Episode 238 – Shannon Wheeler

Virtual Memories Show 238: Shannon Wheeler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

“Cartooning for The New Yorker is like being in a jazz club, and you don’t go into a jazz club and play the Ramones.”

It’s late-night podcast-action with cartoonist Shannon Wheeler! We get into the history of his Too Much Coffee Man comics and his new book, Sh*t My President Says: The Illustrated Tweets of Donald J. Trump (Top Shelf), learning the language of cartooning at The New Yorker (and learning to work with a new editor there), the ways his architecture training informs his storytelling, his discovery of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers at WAY too young an age, the cartooning trick that made him want to draw, his dream project on the history of northern California, and the redemption of the guy who used to dress up as TMCM at conventions! It’s coffee-fueled! Give it a listen! And go buy Sh*t My President Says!

“Liberals can be some of the most conservative people you’ll ever meet.”

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

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Shannon Wheeler is the Eisner Award-winning creator of Too Much Coffee Man, who has appeared internationally in newspapers, magazines, comic books and opera houses. He has contributed to a variety of publications, including The Onion newspaper and The New Yorker magazine. Wheeler currently lives in Portland, OR with his cats, chickens, bees, girlfriend and children. He publishes a comic every day at tmcm.com.

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 an undisclosed location 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. Photos of Mr. Wheeler by me. They’re on my instagram.

Posted on

The Quotable Malcolm Margolin

27536683812_ab85f0afe6_z

This week’s podcast with Malcolm Margolin featured so many great quotes, I don’t want to limit it to the 2 or 3 I put in the show notes for the episode. So here’s a big ol’ compendium of What Malcolm Said:

  • “For years I’d been a slave to the in-box. Being out of the loop was a little disconcerting.”
  • “What got me into publishing was to attract beautiful women.”
  • “On the outside, I can create things I could never create on the inside.”
  • “What I’m passing on to people is . . . the capacity to have fun. To have a life that you can build around. Not branding, and not the demands of the marketplace, but what you really think and what you want.”
  • “Dressing Indians up to be perfect victims does them a disservice. What I’ve tried to do is get beyond the ‘dress code’.”
  • “In some ways I feel regret; the irony is that I was so active in preserving other people’s cultures and languages, but I let mine go.”
  • “As Phil Levine said, ‘Why be yourself when with a little bit of effort you can be interesting?'”
  • “One of the biggest changes in the course of my life is the growing dominance of salesmanship in everything we do.”
  • “Our culture takes knowledge and structures it around the sense of time. We have history. One thing led to another, and that’s causality. . . . We know the history of institutions, of genealogies. The Indians had none of that. Time is flat. Indians structured their knowledge around place.”
  • “Their whole world was filled with stories, and the stories talked to one another.”
  • “I’m an emotion junkie. If I can go more than a few hours without breaking into tears, it’s a wasted day.”
  • “I’m not sure I know anything you couldn’t talk me out of in 5 minutes.”
  • “I think if there’s an inscription on my headstone, it should be, ‘He was easy to please.’”

Now go listen to the podcast!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

Posted on

Episode 176 – Malcolm Margolin

This is one of those Must-Hear episodes of The Virtual Memories Show, people! I know I love all my kids, but I admit this one’s pretty special; give it a few minutes and you’ll understand why.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

Virtual Memories Show #176:
Malcolm Margolin

“What I’m passing on to people is . . . the capacity to have fun. To have a life that you can build around. Not branding, and not the demands of the marketplace, but what you really think and what you want.”

HMALcover_web800px-200x299After a remarkable 40-year career, publisher Malcolm Margolin is retiring from Heyday Books in Berkeley. He joins the show to talk about the liberation of being unimportant, building a roundhouse to fall apart, the “dress code” necessary to make things palatable to a mainstream audience, his efforts to chronicle California Indian culture, his next act(s), and more! Give it a listen!

“In some ways I feel regret; the irony is that I was so active in preserving other people’s cultures and languages, but I let mine go.”

We also talk about the craziest golf foursome ever, the two-week-plus run of LSD that may have changed his life, his hatred of salesmanship (and environmentalists), the publishing revolution of the ‘70s, how we learn to live in a world bigger than our capacity to understand it, the inscription he’d want on his headphone e’d what drew him to publishing all those years ago (the beautiful women)! Give it a listen!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

And become a patron of this podcast via Patreon or Paypal to get access to bonus conversation with Malcolm and a list of all the books we talked about! (Also, here’s a free bonus page of all the great quotes from our conversation.)

“I’m an emotion junkie. If I can go more than a few hours without breaking into tears, it’s a wasted day.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:

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

About our Guest

Malcolm Margolin is an author, publisher, and the founder and executive director of Heyday Books, an independent nonprofit publisher and cultural institution in Berkeley, CA. In 1974 he founded Heyday with the publication of his book The East Bay Out: A Personal Guide to the East Bay Regional Parks. Malcolm is the author/editor of eight books including The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area, named by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the hundred most important books of the 20th century by a western writer. His essays and articles have appeared in a number of periodicals including The Nation, Small Press, National Parks, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. He retired from his role as publisher at Heyday Books this year.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The conversation was recorded at the offices of Heyday Books on a Zoom H2n digital recorder (because I screwed up with my main recorder). I recorded the intro and outro on a Blue enCORE 200 Microphone feeding into a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photos of Malcolm by me.