Hitting The Links: 12/22/24
Let's spend the longest shortest day of the year in the city of brotherly love, make virtual friends real, and celebrate summer hikes! Also, this one's got a whole ton of great links, my crumbling memory palace, and a little b/w beefcake
The Virtual Memories Show News
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I spent yesterday in Philadelphia to record a couple of 2025 podcasts & shoot more Instax for GUEST/HOST, then drove to an undisclosed location in the farmlands of NJ to make a virtual friend real.
On the drive down, I listened back to the podcast I’d recorded with guest #1. We did that one remotely in 2021, and I was surprised by how much it sounded like we were in person: not just the audio quality, but the give-and-take of the conversation felt like two people reading each other in the moment.
This time, we gabbed in his studio, the environment becoming part of the conversation, his house and neighborhood added to my sandbox, a memory palace already creeping into ruin.
Guest #2 is an architecture and design writer whom I’d last visited in 2019. His wife died a few years ago, and I took in the space of their — his — loft and wondered how it had changed since.
I took an Instax of a pair of chairs, because they resonated with me: his book about the history of chairs, her absence. I don’t know if that’s the one what I’ll use in the book; I’ve got options.
And then I drove on to see my friend. We’d never met IRL (as everyone younger than me says), and I was glad to add that 3rd dimension over coffee & her Christmas cookie-bake. I brought along the binder with all my Instax prints for the book, and she asked about some of them. Every one is a story threading into other stories, some more personal and/or life-changing than others, all deriving from the podcast and the intersection of my life with that of each guest.
I still don’t know how the prose segments will work, but it’s not for lack of stuff to write about.
When I got home that night, there was a piece of mail from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It was my patch for completing the 2024 Catskills Fire Tower Challenge.
Coincidentally, the mail also included a Christmas card from my friend who instigated those hikes. I sent him a pic of both & thanked him yet again for getting me out in the world like that.
For the shortest day of the year, it sure was a long day. I’m glad I got to spend it with some friends.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Benjamin Swett • Ken Krimstein • Eddie Campbell • Caitlin McGurk • Frances Jetter • Roland Allen • Eric Drooker
RIP Rickey The GOAT . . . RIP Barry N. Malzberg . . . RIP Alfa Anderson . . . RIP Sir Lady Java . . . RIP Dick Van Arsdale . . . RIP Zakir Hussain . . . RIP Marisa Paredes . . . RIP Martin Solal . . . RIP William J. Hennessy Jr. . . .
Rayful Edmond III died, too.
About a couple of the dead people: Barry & I talked a few times over the years and I’d meant to record with him before his health really declined, but never did. One of my favorite Rickey items is how he hit relatively few triples . . . because he would pull up at second base and just steal third when the next batter came up. Alfa sand co-lead on one of the greatest singles of all time, Le Freak.
I made it into Whitney Matheson’s list of her fave books and podcasts of 2024, but that doesn’t mean her judgment is impaired; go check out the rest of the list! (I’m on the podcast side, but if I get GUEST/HOST out next year, maybe I’ll crack her book list, too.)
Her studiomate Dean Haspiel offers up an end-of-year/30+-year recap. Guess I gotta get to work on my year-end thang.
Warren Ellis has some notes on The Pure Novel.
Holy crap, go read this interview with Heather Hardy about boxing & brain damage.
Loved this photo-tour + commentary of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s home library.
Speaking of foundational texts — as distinct from fave books — I guess this very minute I’d name these: Invisible Cities, Tropic of Cancer, Inside the Whale, A River Runs Through It, Going Native, Arcadia, The Secret Parts of Fortune, The Watchmen, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (initial trilogy). Check with me in five minutes and I’ll name a different equally valid bunch. (I mean, there’s also what I consider my juvenilia, like the Dark Phoenix & Days of Future Past issues of the X-Men, the Stainless Steel Rat novels, the first couple of Foundation books, and on and on, but I don’t know how foundational they were, as it were.)
Speaking of Arcadia, here’s a WP interview with Tom Stoppard as Leopoldstadt starts its DC run.
Hear me out: what if The Americans, but a reality show?
WP interviews Chris Ware & Adrian Tomine about their new books.
Speaking notebooks/sketchbooks, go ogle Bob Dylan’s notebooks. (H/T Roland Allen)
Nice Air Mail piece about Eddie Campbell’s book on Kate Carew.
I haven’t worn a pair of jeans in maybe 8-10 years, but this Derek Guy thread about jean-styles & vocabulary is pretty neat.
I dug this Anahid Nersessian review of the Christine Kozlov exhibition at the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Her descriptions of the location reminded me of the one time I visited the Academy, for Sandy McClatchy’s memorial service in 2018. Which then sent me reeling YET AGAIN through all the moments and experiences and relationships the podcast has given me, and as I drank my 5:30 a.m. coffee, I blissed out to the sense of wonder in my life.
Also, if you need ideas for the holiday, here are Nick Cave’s Christmas plans.
Current/Recent Reading
The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Car - Witold Rybczynski
Six Treasures of the Spiral: Comics Formed Under Pressure - Matt Madden
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
I also started reading The Man Without Qualities this week, one chapter every morning. That’ll take a few months, so I won’t cite it here every time.
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
Because I missed out on my weekend workouts with all that NYC running around/dining last Sat-Sun, and with more day-long travel set for yesterday, I decided to get my 5-day workout cycle in Monday-Friday last week. That went well, and I might still get in weights today, ahead of our Christmas trip. Here’s me wearing glasses:
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! Even though it’ll be Christmas, I think I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, maybe some art, & some Instax pix, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
And it was morning / And I found myself mourning for a childhood / That I thought had disappeared / I looked out the window / And I saw a magpie in the rainbow / The rain had gone / I’m not alone, I turned to the mirror / I saw you, the child, that once loved,