Episode 238 – Shannon Wheeler

Virtual Memories Show 238: Shannon Wheeler

“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.

Episode 213 – Sarah Williams Goldhagen

 

Virtual Memories Show 213:
Sarah Williams Goldhagen

“The built environment is not inert. It’s an active agent in the shaping of people’s lives.”

Why are our buildings crushing our quality of life? Sarah Williams Goldhagen joins the show to talk about her new book, Welcome to Your World (Harper), and how we can live in a better built environment. We get into cognitive neuroscience and the theory of mind-body-environment consciousness, the perils of lowest-common-denominator construction and design, the perils of the “starchitect” phenomenon, the limits of Jane Jacobs’ urban proscriptions, the experience of going on urban planning vacations as a kid with her dad, how she and her family wound up living in a converted church in East Harlem, the challenges of architecture criticism, how her book was predicted by one of my favorite 1980s comics, the planning process a year-long around-the-world trip, and more! Give it a listen! And go buy Welcome to Your World!

“It’s all architecture, and it all needs to be as well-designed as you can make it. And at any level of investment, you can make a better building or a worse building.”

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

Sarah Williams Goldhagen taught at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design for ten years and was the New Republic‘s architecture critic until recently. Currently a contributing editor at Art in America and Architectural Record, she is an award-winning writer who has written about buildings, cities and landscapes for many national and international publications, including the New York Times, The American Prospect, and Harvard Design Magazine. She lives in New York City. (There’s a more extensive bio at her site.)

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 Sarah’s home 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 Sarah by me. It’s on my instagram.

Unrequired Reading: April Link Showers

Bizarre! I was just settling in to collect my May Twitter-links for a big Unrequired Reading when I discovered that last month’s load o’ links never went live! So here’s all of April’s great stuff! I’ll post May’s tomorrow!

* * *

It’s time for another month’s worth of Twitter links, dear readers! If you want to follow along, I’m at twitter.com/groth18!

First, the retweets:

RT @mookiewilson86 (paul raff): David Koresh had a better homestand than the Mets.

* * *

RT @ESQStyle Esquire Style: And the best-dressed male guest at the #RoyalWedding is… not David Beckham.

* * *

RT @felixsalmon (felix salmon): Wherein Martin Amis blathers on for 4,000 dutiful but unnecessary words about Christopher Hitchens.

* * *

RT @kylevanblerk (Kyle van Blerk): Client request of the year.

* * *

RT @simondoonan (Simon Doonan): Creative factory: Simon Doonan, My Faves!

* * *

RT @GreatDismal (William Gibson): “WE HELPED YOUR GRANDAD GET LAID” #daytonbootsvancouver

* * *

RT @mattzollerseitz (Matthew Zoller Seitz): “‘After Hours’ exists to prove that ‘Taxi Driver’ actually displayed some restraint. @notjustmovies

* * *

RT @JPosnanski (Joe Posnanski): In honor of touching CNN story, I write a little more about Nick Charles and a moment I’ll never forget.

* * *

RT @asymmetricinfo (Megan McArdle): Why Europe won’t develop as an independent military power

* * *

RT @kottke (kottke.org): Hilarious fake TLC promo

* * *

RT @kylevanblerk (Kyle van Blerk): Bored at work. Photoshopping Bieber’s head onto things.

* * *

RT @questlove (?Love of The Roots): Man. Not even “OJ Guilt” is the proper colloquialism for what I feel after eatin Cinnabon.

* * *

And now, the links!

NBA Action: Bet On It! #IhadSpursandMagicinthefinals

* * *

Ah, #vodka, with your “marketing gimmicks that make getting drunk seem like a gateway to fame and fortune

* * *

The bowling alley of the #Frick: it’s no basement of the Alamo, but still.

* * *

There’s now a computer as dumb as my boss. #thatswhatshesaid

* * *

Joe Queenan goofs on the #gehry glut.

* * *

Is anyone at the #royalwedding sporting a monkey-tail beard?

* * *

Via @khoi, abandoned Yugoslavia monuments of awesomeness.

* * *

Xanadu comes back to life! (Will #MichaelBeck and @olivianj be at the opening?)

* * *

Xanadu: More of disaster than @XanaduMovie? #likedecoratinganuclearreactor #bringbacktheAlexander’smural

* * *

In the movie, I see Billy Bob Thornton as the local, and Pesci as the mobster: #greateststoryever #trustme

* * *

Tefillin: it’s like Jewish blood pressure.” Go, @MitzvahTank! #areyouJewish?

* * *

Will nobody think of the #pistachios?!

* * *

#AllStarSuperman never should’ve released the sun-eater from captivity:

* * *

The Walk of Shame goes #StreetStyle, via @sartorialist

* * *

So VCs are like the AIDS activists of our time?

* * *

I’m all for taking advantage of gorgeous chicks, but sheesh! #modelscam (via @felixsalmon)

* * *

#HaroldBloom and his “elite Europhile glasses” #agon

* * *

Eat lead! #staedtler and #fabercastell at war

* * *

Every so often, I remind myself why I find contempo literary fiction useless and stultifyingly dull

* * *

Go read this #BenKatchor interview! Nownownow! #CardboardValise (just plow through the “what is comics?” section)

* * *

@felixsalmon delivers a (much appreciated) Jonathan Franzen smackdown

* * *

@witoldr on the secret language of architects.

* * *

This #Houdini article escapes from the need to write in complete sentences. #escapeartistry

* * *

I guess I oughtta get around to reading #GeoffDyer sometime, huh?

* * *

In honor of tonight’s season 2 premiere of #Treme on #HBO, check out this interview with #WendellPierce (#BunkMoreland)

* * *

#ChrisElliott has a DAUGHTER on SNL? #igrowold

* * *

Dali makes aliyah!

* * *

Ron Rosenbaum implores us to visit (Joyce’s) Ithaca (but not much else). (I admit I’ll likely skip #Ulysses)

* * *

I’m awfully happy with my @allenedmonds, I have to say

* * *

I look down on my wife. #shekicksmeintheshins

* * *

#Starbury = Jim Jones?

* * *

Is it good or bad that my TV/movie/prose diet is so similar to that of #StevenSoderbergh? #MillersCrossing!

* * *

25 years ago: Graceland and the Gatwick Baby

* * *

“People who drink coffee are different in many ways from those who don’t drink coffee” #whataboutgin?

* * *

Geoff Dyer on being allergic to David Foster Wallace’s writing (his compare/contrast w/Federer is great)

* * *

“You look into the fiery furnace and see the rich man without any name” #wallstreet

* * *

Neat video of @billy_reid at home.

* * *

@simondoonan on camp: “I am not the brightest Art Nouveau lamp in the room…” #needIsaymore?

* * *

NOLA: The Big Hypothetical

* * *

Fun interview with Glenn O’Brien, onetime Warhol employee and current #StyleGuy for #GQ: #howtobeaman #glennobrien

* * *

Ah, get back to me around yer 20th reunion, ya young bastid.

* * *

Neat take on Android, Google’s business model, and moats.

* * *

Authors and broken promises. #Icantgetstarted

* * *

I would prefer not to poke you. #groupmeh

* * *

Um, the good news is that “cancer” doesn’t exist (the bad news is that it’s more complex than anyone thought) #uhoh

* * *

Would it have more success if it were called a “scrodpiece”? #probablynot

* * *

“It’s still real to me, dammit!” #soareconcussions #andearlydeath #wwe

* * *

When Antonioni met Tarkovsky: #shakeitlikeaPolaroidpicture

* * *

RPG = Rocket-Powered Genius (of design) #rocketpunchgeneration

* * *

@rupaul answers all questions, except, “What’s up with the mustache?” #dragrace

* * *

@david_j_roth speaks truth to pizza (I still don’t understand how @pizzahut stays in business here in NJ.)

* * *

Is there a Damien Hirst level to unlock? #jeffkoonsmustdie

* * *

By @mattnycs: Vote for the man in the small hat: a rabbi runs for office … in Uganda: Parts I and II #really

* * *

Hot chicks with (old) douchebags: #Iblamesociety #Ialsoblamehotchicks

* * *

No Shakespeare in Topeka? #talentnotgenius #billjames

* * *

#Koppenburg: why I don’t bike. #whoneedstheexercise?

* * *

Accidental Mysteries: masked #seenandunseen

* * *

GREAT piece by @comicsreporter on a trip to the #centerforcartoonstudies

* * *

Because, as we know from #chrisrock, books are like Kryptonite to… certain people: #padandquill

* * *

The Perplexitude of Hilfiger

* * *

Proto-Facebook

* * *

Darkness at Noonan: #tomgoestothebar (happy 60th, Tom Noonan!)

* * *

And I close this month’s edition with a non-link:

“I used to believe that worry was a talisman against something bad happening to you.” thx for the wisdom, @ConanOBrien (& @MarcMaron)!

City of Glass Shards

In our last Unrequired Reading, I noted that Frank “curved metal surfaces” Gehry had been bounced as the architect of the Atlantic Yards (AY) arena project for the Nets, in favor of a design that will shave $150-$200 million from construction costs. At the time, I laughed over the depiction of the new arena design as an “airplane hangar.”

Now NYTimes’ architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff — whom I’ve goofed on many a time — offers up a cri de coeur against city politics and real estate development, treating Mr. Gehry’s dismissal by developer Forest City Ratner as a “blow to the art of architecture” and a “shameful betrayal of public trust.”

Architecture, we are being told, is something decorative and expendable, a luxury we can afford only in good times, or if we happen to be very rich. What’s most important is to build, no matter how thoughtless or dehumanizing the results.

Mr. Ouroussoff (the spelling of his name changes from byline to byline, seemingly, so if you look him up, you might try to search a variant spelling with one “s”) twice characterizes the original design for the surrounding AY buildings as evoking tumbling or falling shards of glass, as though that’s a positive thing, while the replacement design for the Nets’ arena by Ellerbe Becket goes within one sentence from “just sits there, adding nothing” to “deadly.” You really need to read it.

What I find sad/funny about this is that Mr. Ouroussoff seems only now to realize that real estate developers (including Forest City Ratner) generally don’t give a crap about architecture. They care about getting land cheap and making lots of money. And speaking of lots. . .

(Don’t get me started on how Mr. Ourousoff’s newspaper managed to demolish numerous businesses in the process of putting up its brand new building, which was developed by . . . Forest City Ratner!)

At one point, Mr. Ourousoff remarks that the abandonment of Mr. Gehry’s design is “the betrayal of a particular community,” but manages throughout the article to skirt the issue of the betrayal (and destruction) of the existing community. After all, it’s a busy intersection and, well . . .

Some people argued that it was overscaled — traffic would be a nightmare — and that it would destroy the character of the neighborhood. But to those of us who defended it, Mr. Gehry’s design was an ingenious solution to a seemingly intractable problem, one that would provide a focal point for an area (and arguably a borough) that could use some cohesion.

To me, it looks like Mr. Gehry was answering a question that no one was really asking. Except Forest City Ratner.

Bonus! I’m reminded of something I read about Donald Trump in the last year or so. An interviewer asked him why he doesn’t commission big-name architects to design really fantastic buildings. He replied (I’m paraphrasing), “Why bother? Between the zoning laws and the activist groups, it all gets stripped down to a big tower anyway.” So he cuts out the middleman and goes right for the big, uninteresting tower.

Double-Bonus! The best website I read about the ongoing disaster of AY is Atlantic Yards Report. And if you’re looking for more examples of what’s lost through NYC’s gentrification, visit Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York.

Triple-Bonus! NYmag.com offers an entertaining distillation of the article!