5Aug
Nothing says reunion of old friends quite like a few cups of tea and a couple of microphones. It
had been a year or two since I’d last seen my former Engadget colleague
and current world record holding blogger Darren Murph, so I suggested a
sit down at my favorite combination tea house/impromptu podcast
recording venue when he found himself in the city for a few days. In
addition to his PR day job, Murph is an incredibly prolific writer who
has penned a 17,000+ blog posts and a number of electronics guides. His
latest book, however, is by far his most personal. The self-released Living the Remote Dream is a sort of bible for the blogger’s world traveling, remote working lifestyle. Murph
and I sat down over some pots of green tea and discussed our glory days
of gadget blogging and surviving the rapidly changing world of digital
publishing. As with Murph’s latest book, it’s one of the most personal
episodes of RiYL, along side the conversation with fellow former Engadgeteer Tim Stevens about life in the trenches of tech journalism.
29Jul
The indie comics booths present a perfect sort of eye in the middle
of the Comic Con storm. Top Shelf, Drawn & Quarterly and
Fantagraphics form a perfect sort of triangle where the costumed
self-madness of the show takes a momentary reprieve. This is
where Not Funny Ha-Ha has its unofficial debuts. A few week later, Leah
Hayes will present the book more formally, reading from the
abortion-themed graphic novel in front of a crowd at Los Angeles
independent bookstore. For now, however, she discusses the story with
curious parties who pass through the Fantagraphics booth. The
stories have already begun flooding in, she explains as we sit down in a
shady spot behind the San Diego Convention Center. The subject matter
is nothing if not a conversation starter. Thus far, she’s already
have several strangers describe their own abortion experience or the
the experience of someone close to them. Others have discussed
different difficult moments — heck, over the course of our conversation,
I find myself relating a story about recently losing a pet. It’s just
that sort of book. Hayes and I discuss the impact of debuting
such an intimate book in boisterous environment on a small patch of
grass as cosplayers ride in the backs of rickshaws on either side of our
little green island.
22Jul
Jeff Smith made comics safe for kids again. In 1991, the cartoonist
began self-publishing, an all-ages adventure story rendering in a style
reminiscent of legends Walt Kelly and Carl Barks that felt like a breath
of fresh air in a world of sequential art utterly disrupted by Watchmen
and the Dark Knight half a decade before. With 55 issues spread
out over the course of 13 years, Smith created one of the medium’s great
masterworks, a 1,300 cartoon page epic to rival the likes of the
Odyssey or Lord of Rings, racking up ten Eisners and 11 Harvey Awards in
the process. After a decade and a half in Boneville, Smith
abruptly shifted gears with RASL, a sci-fi tale of a dimension-hopping
art thief also published on his own Cartoon Books. Shortly after the end
of RASL’s run, Smith once again pivoted, exploring the world of
Webcomics through Tüki, the largely wordless tale of African tribesman
who dared venture to other continents. We sat down with Smith at
Book Expo of America to discover his wideranging and pioneering works,
the wild world of self-publishing and how his hometown of Columbus, Ohio
has been transformed into Comicstown, USA.
15Jul
Some context before we get started: I met Sam Seder five or so years
back when he cohosted a video show in the Air America break room. By
then the progressive talk station was on its last legs. Both
Seder and cohost Marc Maron had been through the ringer with other
programs and had ended up setting a desk directly in front of a vending
machine in a radio station kitchen.After the plug was
unceremoniously pulled, Seder did what countless abruptly unemployed
comedian/radio personalities have since: he launched a podcast. The show
borrowed the format, Jon Benjamin-voiced bumpers and title of an Air
American show he had co-hosted with long-time friend Janeane Garofalo. Ten years after launching, The Majority Report is still going strong, featuring daily interviews with guests and left
leaning political talk that would make many of the talking heads at
MSNBC. When sat down at Seder’s downtown Brooklyn studio, the
specter of Break Room Live was very much on my mind, thanks in no small
part to a the fact that Maron had released an interview with Seder on
WTF that very week. As such, there’s much talk about vending machines, political radio and how to deal with a friend’s new-found success.
7Jul
I would have been more than content to discuss Wild Cat Academy, the
New York City second chance high where Lisa Wilde has taught for more
than a decade and a half. What resulted from our hour-long
conversation, however, was one of the more wide-ranging interviews we’ve
run for some time, hitting on subjects like life in the city and
juggling, life, family and part-time creative pursuits. And the,
of course, there’s the factotum of jobs that factor so prominently into
Wilde’s bio, from baking, to the BBC to the teaching gig that gave rise
to Yo Miss, a self-published mini-comic turned anthology by our friends
at Microcosm Books. Wilde sent me a few issues while I was
writing about zines for Boing Boing, and I knew she’s make for a
fascinating interview. It took a year or two for us to finally line our
schedules up, but when we sat down in the drawing studio of the Brooklyn
home she shares with her husband and son, it was well worth the wait.
1Jul
This isn’t the first time this has happened, the realization that an
upcoming guest has recently been on WTF fills me with an immediate sense
of dread. Surely Maron has mined this person for all of their
conversational juices. Of course, that worry subsides almost immediately
when the interviewee is Kevin Allison The former State member has
built a second career for himself standing on-stage and not holding
back. The Cincinnati-born comedian founded Risk! as a weekly live show
in Manhattan, in August of 2009. A few months later, the series
grew into a podcast, setting itself apart from myriad other storytelling
radio shows and podcasts thanks to some well-known guests and a
dedication to Allison’s fearless confessional style. Risk’s explicit
mission statement involves guests, “tell[ing] true stories they never
thought they’d dare to share in public.” As a frequent Risk
storyteller himself, Allison is no stranger to brutal honesty. It’s a
great quality in a podcast guest — and one that was happily on full
display as we sat down in an empty bar in Astoria, NY ahead of a Friday
night standup set.
24Jun
I’m pretty sure I first heard about Jeffrey Lewis through his music.
By the time I arrived in New York City, the singer-songwriter was
already a veteran of the same Lower East Side antifolk scene that gave
the world the likes of the Moldy Peaches. Turns out the guy also makes
some really terrific comics as well. And better still, he takes
every opportunity available to combine the two forms, as with with a
series of comic essays on the songwriting process written for the New
York Times, or the year we asked him to perform at Manhattan’s MoCCA
Fest in which he combined singing with an easel baring drawings for a
lo-fi multimedia storytelling experience. I ran into Lewis once
again at this year’s MoCCA comics show and he happily agreed to an
impromptu conversation on a scenic Chelsea rooftop overlooking the
Hudson. It’s a relatively quick (by RiYL standards) conversation,
due to the rapidly dropping rooftop temperatures and Lewis’s need to
get back to his unmanned table at the show, but it’s still a
wide-ranging and interesting chat on the nature of creativity from an
artist who seemingly does it all.
17Jun
I’m fairly certain the phrase “mommy blog” is tossed around once or
twice over the course this interview. I only mention it here as I’m sure
it sends up a few red flags, though undeservedly so. For starters,
there’s the fact that The East Village Inky predates the phenomenon by
at least a decade or so. Ayun Halliday has been producing the
pocket-sized, photocopied zine for over 20 years now, having just
released issue 55 when we sat down for a chat a local watering hole
following the Brooklyn Zine Fest. The series is a breezy and
largely lighthearted first-hand account of two artists raising children
in the city, told through a series of stories, mini-comics and whatever
other assorted odds and ends Halliday opts to include. The Inky
also manages to avoid most of the preachy and rose-colored trappings of
its successors, which are no doubt a large part of what’s made the
long-running zine beloved even amongst childless readers. Despite
living in the same metropolitan area, I’ve had a surprising amount of
trouble tracking Halliday down — due, perhaps, to a busy schedule of
work related and artistic pursuits, travel and the whole raising two
children thing. When we final sat down in the backyard of a Brooklyn
bar, I’m happy we were finally able to make it happen. It’s a wide ranging and fascinating conversation about child-rearing, artistic ambition and the give and take between the two.
9Jun
For me, it goes Kids in the Hall, Kurt Vonnegut and punk rock, in
that order. I shudder to think what sort of person I might have become
had Comedy Central not started airing the Canadian sketch show in reruns
right after show during my formative years. KITH presented new
frontiers in comedy my tender suburban brain never imagined were
possible. And Bruce McCulloch was their poet laureate. McCulloch
was the weirdo in a group of weirdos. The angry young man with a
penchant gruff voiced, world weary characters and flair for beat poetry,
as evidenced by 1995’s criminal underrated comedy record, Shame Based
Man. Spending a Halloween chewing on an unlit cigar with half a
head of cabbage taped to my skull seemed like a no-brainer in high
school, and when I found out that KITH were making a triumphant live
show return to New York City, his publicist was the first on my list to
receive an overzealous email. When he answered the door to his
room, McCulloch gently ribbed the hotel employee for letting the
riffraff through security. Once inside, the comedian opened up about his
time the troupe and the youthful rebellion behind his new TV series,
Young Drunk Punk.
3Jun
Jon Spencer is tired of talking about music. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s been talking about it professionally ever since Pussy Galore emerged from the garages of Washington DC 30 years back. Or maybe it’s because he’s knee deep in the press junket for Blues Explosion’s 10th full-length, Freedom Tower No Wave Dance Party 2015. I met the musician at his practice space, a nondescript spot, located in a lower-Manhattan basement down a dank flight of stair a few days after I managed to catch him during the final show of his five boroughs tour. It was an explosion ending at a brewery in Astoria, Queens, which found Spencer unraveling and wearing a giant American flag and hanging from a balcony while performing daring feats on rock and roll. As excited as I am to talk about what I’ve just seen however, the singer really comes alive when the topic of comics arise, as he discusses collaborations with cartoonists like Paul Pope and Tony Millionaire, and his love for the magazine Heavy Metal, whose back page rock writing turned him onto rock and roll oddities like The Residents. Spencer also happily discusses the late night horror films that introduced him to the otherworldly sound of the theremin that has become tentpole feature of the group’s unhinged sound. By the end of the conversation, he pulls out a backpack full of the week’s scores at the nearby comics shop, Forbidden Planet.