PODCAST

I posted Episode 680 of my Virtual Memories Show yesterday! During my LA weekend, I asked author, pal, and past guest Kate Maruyama if she’d be interested in interviewing me, and for some crazy reason, she said yes! So this time around you get me doing my best not to ask the other person questions, and just letting it fly, as we talk about the history of the podcast, my dream list of pod-guests, my semi-fake erudition, why we should practice arts we're no good at, mortality and progeny, the gentle change of years, the legend of the fire defenses of the Beinecke Library at Yale, and a TON of stories. Give it a listen! And go subscribe to Kate’s newsletter and read her books!

Recent podcast episodes: Heather Cass White • Paul Gravett • Luis Mendo • Benoit Denizet-Lewis • Clare Carlisle • Josh Alan Friedman • Andrew Durbin

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

BIRDY!

She can look quizzical sometimes.

DAYS OF DIRT AND ROBOTS

I’m in the San Diego airport after a biotech trade show/conference. I flew out to LA Friday, took the Pacific Surfliner down Monday morning for the show.

The day before my flight, I joined several thousand/million of my closest friends for the Knicks’ championship parade. I got there two hours early but it turns out that was two hours late; the pens along the parade route were filled so I hung out one block away on Church and Park. People climbed sanitation trucks and traffic lights, we cheered and chanted, and a whole lot of folks got messed up at like 10 a.m. On the way home, I texted Amy, “It was like the Hajj, but with weed. A lot of weed.”

On the way home, I visited my father’s grave and the newly installed marker. I recited the Kaddish and sat on the grass and talked about the Knicks.

And then on to LA, the most fragmented and strange city I visit. In 2014, David Baerwald told me, “Artistically, LA’s a disaster. It’s full of amazing stories. But as a city, it’s not a city. Nobody but bus-drivers see the whole place.”

I rented a car rather than take Lyfts to my various get-togethers, and let GPS guide me all over that patchwork. I don’t understand how that city fits together, how all these neighborhoods and enclaves cohere, but maybe the magic is in the lack of coherence. This week’s guest — well, HOST — Kate Maruyama was going to take me on her walking tour of downtown LA, but a big warehouse fire made it unsafe to breathe in that area, so I’ll have to wait on the city’s big picture.

It’s not just the fragmentation; it’s all the cultural signs and symbols. The Industry, as it’s known, has an outsized presence there, though so much of the population has nothing to do with entertainment.

The billboards and buses feature pop singers and movies and TV shows I’ve never heard of, but I’m accustomed to that. This trip, I repeatedly passed billboards that displayed beautiful young people and the text DAYS OF DIRT, and had no idea what it was referring to. A pop-group? A movie? A TV show?

My divorce from the culture began in the 1990s, but it feels like it’s accelerating as I get older, or that I’M accelerating, a satellite that lost its orbit and whirls on into the void.

I decided I’d only look up DAYS OF DIRT once I left the city, to keep the mystery contained there. Hair cream.

On my first afternoon in the city, I walked down Wilshire from my hotel to a restaurant. Behind me, a food delivery robot rolled along the sidewalk. I’ve only seen them in California, and as this one passed me, I wondered about who orders robot food.

Up ahead, a homeless man was lying in the sidewalk, and the robot had to stop, adjust and make a diagonal path to avoid him. But that would have led it into a section of sidewalk that was a grating, not concrete, and it pulled up short. It started moving back and forth slowly, and I felt sad. I wanted to pick it up and put it on the right path, like helping an inchworm find its way, except it probably weighed 200 lbs., and my days of lifting helpless 200-pounders off the ground ended last year when Dad died.

As I passed the paralyzed ‘bot, a car zoomed past on Wilshire with no driver and an array of cameras whizzing on its roof and bumpers. I’d never seen a Waymo in action before, and grew disconcerted at the sight of them over the weekend. People will do anything to avoid the human touch.

But I got through my trip, hanging out with & recording podcasts with Jonathan Ames (coming in Sept.), Kate Maruyama, and Katie Skelly (coming in 2 weeks). Each of them revealed aspects of the city and the world and myself to me. I heard about theosophy, ate Armenian kebab, and had my tarot read. And I got to pet Ames’s dog, Fezzik.

On Sunday morning, I took the subway downtown from my weird Beverly Hills hotel to visit the Broad Museum. The smoke from that warehouse fire wasn’t too bad at 10 a.m., and I had a good time in the main collection, though I regret not buying a ticket for the Yoko Ono exhibit, Music of the Mind.

There were some neat pieces in the contemporary collection, as well as art that I think is a fraud, like Jeff Koons and much Roy Lichtenstein. I took in what I could, was happy to see some Robert Longo graphite pieces, and tried to figure out whether Ellen’s skirt has drapery or if it’s a solid black.

I didn’t have any life-changing moments, though I was captivated by some pieces, esp. among the Basquiats.

I visited the gift shop on the way out, and picked up a YOKO ONO black T-shirt. The cashier directed me to a folding table outside, where some people were writing notes, and said, “If you go over there, you can write down a wish and tie it to the olive trees for Yoko.”

I thanked her, went outside, and felt my eyes water from the smoke. The wind must have changed since I arrived, and the warehouse fire had turned the air silver, which helped when I took a photo of the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall but otherwise made the area unbreathable.

But I get ahead of myself. I breathed through my shirt, stood behind the people at the table, saw them writing on cards that had a hole punched in and a string looped through, and wondered what I would wish for.

I thought about Yoko, about sarcasm, about generalities, about CLL, about my friends, about the Knicks, about my Dad, about the people who checked on me that morning because it was my first Father’s Day since Dad died (in the evening, I thought about the people who didn’t check on me, and let myself feel some anger, then let it go).

And then they all got up from the table to take their wishes to the grove, so I took a card, picked up a pen, and wrote

and tied it to a branch, where it can join her Wish Trees for Los Angeles.

There’s more there’s always more but they’re going to call us to board soon and all I want is to be home with Amy with Birdy with the inferior light of home

HITTING THE LINKS

Here are a couple of links for you

• RIP James Burrows . . . RIP Clive Davis . . . RIP Carlo Ginzburg . . . RIP Danny Simmons . . . RIP Mark Singer . . .

• Rebecca Mead wrote a tribute to David Hockney. Jerry Saltz wrote one, too.

• At my day job, I got interviewed during a trade show a couple weeks ago, and was ambushed about my Hampshire College thoughts, as well as What I'm Reading. Also, I adjust my jacket & cuffs multiple times. ENJOY!

• I was fascinated by this piece on the holy anorexia of St. Catherine and the unholy anorexia of today’s female influencers & celebs.

• David Denby wrote about why The Odyssey doesn’t work as a movie.

• Hey, the Library of Congress has acquired artwork from past guests Eric Drooker and Josh Neufeld!

• Once again, for those of you who may have missed my position on this: fuck dress sneakers.

POSTCARD

I mail out a postcard every day, so let me know if you want to be on my list. Yesterday, I caught up on the 10-day backlog from my May trip, along with the dailies since I got back. Some mornings I just don’t have it in me.

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.

Don’t let me falter, don’t let me ride / don’t let the earth in me subside / let me see just who I will become,