The Virtual Memories Show

Live from MoCCA 2018, Roz Chast rejoins the show to talk about her 40-year+ career as the "different-different-different" cartoonist at The New Yorker, what her workday is like, why she avoids topical and political cartooning, the joy of drawing on an iPad and the fun of Instagram, and more! We get into her new book, Going Into Town: A Love Letter To New York (Bloomsbury USA), and her issues with the suburbs, like learning to drive at 38 and being scare of having a basement. We also discuss the transition to a new cartoon editor at The New Yorker who's the same age as her kids, the recent shift in gender representation, and the gags she couldn't have made before she lost her parents. Plus: audience Q&A! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Director/Producer JJ Sedelmaier has been in and around animation for nearly 40 years. We sat down to talk about the false choice of art and commerce, how the advertising and animation businesses have changed over the years he's been working in them, using animation for good instead of evil, how working in a Greek restaurant as a teen prepared him to run his own animation studio, the insane process of animating the first season of Beavis & Butthead, the joy of working with his favorite artists and cartoonists, not worrying about his road-not-traveled, stepping away from SNL's TV Funhouse after 3 years (during which time he co-created Ace & Gary, the Ambiguously Gay Duo), the time he met Steve Ditko, how Mark Newgarden & Paul Karasik have taught him to appreciate Nancy, the trap of tapping into nostalgia (and the missed opportunity of that Geico ad with He-Man), his responses to my totally unfair "X or Y" questions (incl. "Herriman or McCay?" and "Kurtzman or Eisner?"), and plenty more! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Design scholar Steven Heller joins the show to talk about writing and editing more than 182 books on design and its history (and lamenting the books he still wants to do). We get into his evolution from cartooning to graphic design, how he became a scholar of satiric magazines, what went into building the MFA entrepreneurial design program at School of Visual Arts, and the maybe too-encompassing use of the word "design". We also talk about the transition from print to digital media, how he manages to keep up a daily blog, his career at the New York Times (designing the op/ed page and the Book Review, and occasionally writing obits), his legacy, how he's dealing with Parkinson's syndrome, how a terrible student can become a good teacher, and more! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

He's been on my list of dream-guests since I launched the podcast, and now Love & Rockets cartoonist Jaime Hernandez joins the show! We talk about his new book of Latin American folktales, The Dragon Slayer (TOON Graphic), the family-centric folktales of his own youth in Oxnard, CA, the fun of drawing for kids, and the times he's felt Maggie Chascarillo had nothing left to say. We get into the origins of Love & Rockets, how he learned to tell a story and still develop characters, the L&R story that marked a turning point for him, what prompted a big reunion storyline of his key characters, the thing he most hates drawing, the first time he saw someone with a Love & Rockets tattoo (and the stories of his own tattoos), and the vital question: is punk rock dead? Plus, Katie Skelly (My Pretty Vampire) talks about what Jaime's comics mean to her! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Cartoonist and playwright Dean Haspiel joins the show to talk about his new play, The Last Bar At The End Of The World (running April 10-15, 2018!) and how he looks at his life & career after turning 50. We get into his New Brooklyn series of webcomics, our mutual upbringing on superhero comics, the inherent lie of being a freelancer, his father's friendship with Marilyn Monroe, writing for theater vs. comics, his devotion to Mamet's On Directing Film, my theory that most of Tarantino's movies are about acting, fulfilling his youthful dream of drawing the Fantastic Four, and the validity of Jack Kirby's (apocryphal) statement, "Comics will break your heart." • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

On the eve of the premiere of You Were Never Really Here, writer Jonathan Ames returns to his stomping grounds of northern NJ to talk about crime novels, the literary pilgrimages of his youth, getting laughs at AA meetings, and more. We get into the process of seeing his novella adapted into film, his decade-long fascination with Richard Stark's Parker novels, the catharses and paradoxes of his confessional writing, learning on the fly to write for TV and working with a writers' room for Bored to Death and Blunt Talk, the experience of studying creative writing at Princeton under Joyce Carol Oates, learning The Secret to stop being cheap with himself, his favorite writing form (given that he's made novels, stories, columns, nonfiction, films, TV, and comics), the act of subsuming himself into fictional characters, the bizarre error on his IMDB page that left me totally flummoxed, and the amazing NJ coincidence of one of the locations used in the movie. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Paintoonist (painter + cartoonist) Jerry Moriarty joins the show to talk about playing the Art Card for 80 years and counting. We get into the genesis of his Jack Survives comics and his recent book "whatsa paintoonist?", his 50 years teaching at SVA, his move back to his childhood home in upstate NY in his 70s, the role of memory in art, his evolution from AbEx to Pop Art to representational to paintooning (with a sideline in magazine illustration), his experience playing at CBGB's with the Steel Tips, his evening with Willem De Kooning, the belief that talent is a scam, why he doesn't sell his paintings (and who he's hoping to bequeath his paintings to), and a lot more! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Liveright Publishing editor-in-chief Robert Weil joins the show on the eve of this year's Festival Neue Literatur to talk about editing translations, why great translators are heroes (and ought to get credited on book covers), and his admiration/adoration for Barbara Perlmutter, winner of this year's Friedich Ulfers Prize. Along the way, we talk about the nuts-and-bolts of editing writers and why good writers want to be edited, the ongoing relevance of The Scarlet Letter and our Hawthorne vs. Melville takes, the most haunting line of Henry Roth, and Robert's incredible run of graphic novels (think Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, Jules Feiffer, and David Small). Plus, we bond over the fact that he edited one of my all-time favorite books: Clive James' Cultural Amnesia! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Time for a books & booze break! Lexicographer/bartender Jesse Sheidlower returns to the show to talk about bartending at The Threesome Tollbooth, a very intimate cocktail experience in Brooklyn (as in, there's only space for two patrons and a bartender). We get into the origin of the Tollbooth and why it's neither a "speakeasy" nor immersive theater, the confession-booth aspect of the space and the sanctity of the bartender-patron relationship, the reasons classic cocktails become classic and why barely anyone's ever had a real daiquiri, and how you can get New Yorkers to stop looking at their phones. Plus, we talk about Jesse's new built-in bookshelves (which are a sight to behold)! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Science fiction author Lavie Tidhar joins the show to talk about the five topics that Israeli novelists are allowed to write about, his affinity for pulp fiction tropes, when it's okay to make fun of Hitler (which he does at great length in A Man Lies Dreaming), why he finds utopias sinister (hint: he was raised on a kibbutz), how to build a career on ambitious failure, the eye-opening experience of editing world anthologies of SF, the difference between having fans and having readers, the distracting joy of Twitter, why not getting published in Israel felt like a reverse-BDS movement, and what it's like never knowing which shelf a bookstore will decide to put his books. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal