Hitting The Links: 6/30/24
A whole ton of great links, the meaning of in-person conversation, the question of where people hang out & find out what's cool, + a deer
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Nothing beyond reality
Yesterday I drove up to New Haven to record this week’s episode (coming Tuesday). I have a remote podcast to record this morning. Except for a bonus show I did in April, I haven’t recorded remotely since my burn-down-the-house episode with Edith Hall 3+ months ago.
It feels like The Before Time, when I only did in-person sessions. I still quote a Frank O’Hara line I cribbed while prepping for my first (in-person) podcast with Brad Gooch many years ago: “The only truth is face to face”.
Not that it’s Truth that I’m after. I’m searching for good conversation, though to what end is unclear. And I tend to find it more often when I can see the changing light across someone’s face.
Here’s my frazzled-ass self in standstill traffic on the Saw Mill Parkway yesterday afternoon, on the drive home.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Bob Fingerman • Swan Huntley • Stan Mack • Jim Moske • Adam Moss • Randy Fertel • D.W. Young • Jen Silverman
RIP Martin Mull . . . RIP Kinky Friedman . . . RIP Shifty Shellshock . . . RIP Frederick Crews . . . RIP Tamayo Perry . . . RIP Bill Cobbs . . . RIP The Hangman Of Bangladesh . . .
Also RIP Longform Podcast; I outlasted another one.
Getting to record with the late George Lois was one of my pantheon-moments. I posted something a while back when it was up for sale after George and his wife Rosemary’s deaths in 2022, but Steven Heller (2018, 2019, 2022) did a post about the apartment that’s filled w/great photos, so here you go again.
Speaking of pantheon-level guests, it was the anniversary of Milton Glaser’s birth (& death) this week. Here’s a piece by Todd Klein about how Milton designed the DC Comics bullet.
And then there are the pantheon-level folks I never got (although I tried), like the late Robert Gottlieb, whose family recently auctioned off some of his stuff.
I suppose if you were going to do a stage version of Withnail & I, you could do a lot worse than casting Klaus from The Umbrella Academy as Withnail. (Which is to say, go read this interview with/profile of Bruce Robinson.)
I feel like the real question is: would your dog clone you?
As I have said since he came to the Yankees, baseball season doesn’t truly begin until Giancarlo Stanton goes on the injured list.
Warren Ellis on the morning post, social media, and newsletters.
Not sure why this article on the rise of Romantasy novels needed three reporters, but it’s a fun read.
I heard The Third Man’s zither theme in my head while I read this piece on spies in present-day Vienna.
Dean Haspiel (2018, 2023) — who has connected me with a bunch of great pod-guests, including this week’s guest, Bob Fingerman — ponders the question of how people find out What’s Cool in his latest newsletter. It’s a variant of my question after Tower Records (& lots of other rekkid shops) closed down: “Where do kids hang out?” In Dino’s case, this question ties into his new Kickstarter-ed comic, THE RED HOOK X DEAN HASPIEL. We did a bonus episode around that; you should go listen & go get Dino’s meta-mem-noir!
Go read this post from Summer Pierre and remember to change your life. (And go support Summer’s Patreon!)
Current/Recent Reading
I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together - Maurice Vellekoop
“And writing is such a fragile thing. It wasn’t hard to write well, but it was hard to make writing that was alive, writing that could pry open the world and draw it together in one and the same movement. When it didn’t work, which it never really did, not really, I would sit there like a conceited idiot and wonder who I thought I was, supposing I could write for others.”
—Karl Ove Knausgaard (tr. Don Bartlett, Martin Aitken), My Struggle: Book 6
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
My shoulder was aching too much, so I skipped weights last Tuesday, giving me a 4-day weights-yoga cycle instead of 5. At present, I can’t sleep on my right side without being debilitated the rest of the day; I’ll put up with it until my physical in mid-July. Meantime, I modified my weights routine Friday, got in yoga yesterday evening, after I got home from New Haven, and hope for more weights today. Next week’s a no-go as I’ll be traveling for part of the holiday weekend, but maybe I’ll get in a run or two on the hotel treadmill, and I’m sure Amy & I will do plenty of walking, as is our wont.
Here’s a deer that I met on a 4-mi. walk last Friday, looking like he wanted to pounce & then gore me with his cute little antlers.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & sure maybe a little profundity or something.
‘Cause what we are is victims of fun,