NO PODCAST?

Yep, no new podcast this week while I’m traveling for business — Tokyo/Urawa, Amsterdam/Rotterdam, London — but I’ve booked two pod-guests for the trip, justifying my adding ~10 lbs. of pod-gear to my 12-day travel kit, which only includes a rolling carry-on and an EDC bag. I’ve also booked 6 different hotels, to give you an idea of just how frazzled I’ll be.

This afternoon in Urawa, I gave my presentation to Japan’s version of my trade association. The organizers opted not to have a translator — they recorded my spiel so they can translate that later on — and so I delivered my remarks to a room full of people who may not have understood much of what I was saying.

At the reception an hour later, everyone assured me it went fine. While one of the organizers was giving a speech in Japanese, I was button-holed by the one other non-Japanese person in the room. Eventually someone turned to me and said, "Aren't you going to go up? He’s calling you on stage." That’s when I realized the organizer had been saying, "Gil-san," so I hurried over, gave an improvised speech that I don't know if anyone understood, and stepped down to applause.

As podcasts go, last week — it feels like a month ago, but that’s just me — I posted Episode 676 of my Virtual Memories Show, where Benoit Denizet-Lewis & I talked about his fantastic new book, YOU’VE CHANGED: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation (William Morrow), and tried to define change and self-transformation, while exploring the limits of redemption, among other things. Give it a listen!

Recent podcast episodes: Clare Carlisle • Josh Alan Friedman • Andrew Durbin • Dean Haspiel & Doug Latino • Rachel Tzvia Back • Sven Birkerts • Indefinite Hiatus monologue

Every book (non-comics) that I’ve finished since 1989.

BIRDY!

Here’s BIRDY! with walkie-yawns

HITTING THE LINKS

Since there’s no podcast this week, you deserve some links.

• RIP Sandy Leopold

• Even though I’m in Japan, I’ll attest: There are never too many Godzillas.

• Once upon a time, the Livingston Mall was Mecca for me and my brother, because it had the Heroes World comic shop.

• If the malls AND diners go away, what will be left of New Jersey?

• Dwight Garner laments the death of book reviews in newspapers, though FIRE THE BASTARDS! — the Jack Green rampage through nearly 5 dozen half-assed, didn’t bother to finish the book, made up shit along the way newspaper reviews of William Gaddis’ The Recognitions in 1955 — as a reminder that the golden age sucked, too.

• I belong to two cults: The Nice Guys and Hudson Hawk.

• My oncologist & I debated whether I’m 10-15 lbs. overweight or have body dysmorphic disorder, but can’t it be both?

• She didn’t tell me about my projected lifespan, and I didn’t tell her about my projected hotspan.

• Speaking of my oncologist, there was no change in status after last week’s oncology visit; my white blood cell count continues to creep up, but not rapidly enough to signal It’s Time For Treatment.

INSTAX

Two days before I started this trip, we took our houseguests to NYC so that they could see the Met. There was a Raphael exhibition on, and I took this Instax because I liked empty spaces and the suggestion of something more or something missing.

Here’s a regular ol’ photo I took that afternoon, of a marble sarcophagus fragment depicting the death of Meleager. I used my phone’s Portrait mode and like the sharpness it brings to the face.

POSTCARD

I mail out a postcard every day, so let me know if you want to be on my list.

EXPENSES

If you want to help out with Virtual Memories Show expenses — this email runs $29/month, podcast-hosting is $25/month, and the remote recording account is $20/month — or otherwise Contribute To The Cause, you can make a one-time contribution of any size via Stripe, or a recurring one via Patreon. Or maybe save your money for when I launch the Kickstarter for my Instax book.

NEXT TIME

Thanks for reading this far. See you next time, I hope.

Doesn't speak the language / He holds no currency / He is a foreign man,