Hitting The Links: 8/24/25
Lots of great links to check out, plus last call on AMA, my comic deadline, reading lists, and more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Lines On Paper
LAST CALL: If you’ve got any Ask Me Anything questions for this coming week’s podcast, send ‘em over by Monday night (August 25). I’ve only got 4 submitters so far, and if I don’t get any more, I’ll take next week off from the podcast.
I’d love to answer all yer damn questions for/about me, so send away! In the episode, I won’t mention who the questions are from.
I’ve committed to writing and drawing a 2-page comic. It’s due next week. I did the writing a couple months ago & the editor approved of it, so I have a panel-by-panel map of the images and text, but I have to actually MAKE the goddamned thing.
I spent a chunk of yesterday doing a rough layout, panicking over the lettering and all the aspects of the drawings that fill me with dread: lighting, angles, detail, etc.
I had to clean off my drawing table before I could get started, clearing off a bunch of sketchbooks, brushes, and paints. (This comic will just be pen & ink.)
While I was moving them, I started flipping through some sketchbooks, esp. the Book of Birds. Reader, I plotzed at the sight of those pages. I’d forgotten how much progress I’d made, how beautiful some of those drawings were, how much effort went into them, how finely I could turn a little detail here and there. For the final one in the book (so far), from Jan. 2024 —
— I was distilling away details and focusing on something more essential. Looking at it yesterday, my brain just went kablooey, and I remembered that I can actually draw, although comics panels are different than these sketchbook pages.
What really struck me as I went through all those pages is how much time I could spend just drawing and not thinking about anything else. I wish I could get back to that, but there’s so much so much so much.
For now, I’ve gotta figure out the actual panel dimensions, lettering, etc., then commit a lot of lines to paper. Wish me luck.
Birdy Of The Week
She locked eyes with a deer on this morning’s walk, but didn’t react badly. Not like when we surprised a couple of turkey-vultures that were noshing in the dumpsters behind the strip mall a few minutes later. She went absolutely bananas when they flew away.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Dan Goldman • David Levithan/Jens Lekman • Sacha Mardou • Oliver Radclyffe • Eulogy • Rachel Cockerell • Paul Karasik • Kate Maruyama
RIP Terence Stamp (we rewatched Priscilla, Queen of the Desert the night he died, and I’ve got The Limey & The Hit on tap) . . . RIP Frisbee . . . RIP Shelly Zegart . . . RIP Ron Turcotte . . . RIP Dan Tana . . . RIP Joe Caroff . . . RIP Ronnie Rondell . . . RIP Jules Witcover . . . RIP Richard Lee . . . RIP Brent Hinds . . . RIP Bruce Slovin . . .
Also, James Dobson died.
This piece by Ana Marie Cox about Rhett Miller is not easily described in a one-liner, so all I can say is GO READ IT.
Ski Saudi Arabia! (Or not . . .)
I kinda feel like, given the present moment and the nature of his art, this Robert Longo profile could have gone a little more into the part where his high school friend was killed in the Kent State shootings.
The new DEVO documentary sure goes there, with Gerald Casale saying that the shootings by the National Guard — in which two of his friends were killed — were the breaking point for him, and led directly to the founding of DEVO and their principle of De-evolution as a creative response to the America they witnessed.
Also, while I endorse DEVO’s message — MUTATE, DON’T STAGNATE — I do have an oncology check-in next week, so I’m hoping I haven’t mutated too much.
Crappy news about the NEH canceling its creative writing fellowship program.
This massive WIRED article about the future of the auto industry interviews just about every major carmaker out there, except Subaru, which doesn’t make me too optimistic about what I’ll buy when my Outback dies.
I’ve been meaning to link to What Dan Read, the 63-year reading list of Dan Pelzer, but the website is really kinda difficult to read, especially on a laptop. Still, enough people have sent stories about it my way that I may as well.
As Horace Bianchon writes, you’re not supposed to remember them all. There are plenty of books in my “every book since 1989” list that I’ve largely forgotten (or wish I’d skipped).
Good Air Mail profile of literary editor Gary Fisketjon, who helped create the whole Vintage identity/branding and edited a ton of great contemporary writers.
The impetus for the profile is that Fisketjon is back from editor-prison — it takes a while, but it does get into the uncorroborated reasons for 2019 firing — to serve as editor of a new publishing imprint Panamerica (co-founded by Walter Kirn), and the writer, Ash Carter, quips, “Given that in this country there are between 500,000 and one million books commercially published each year, one might reasonably wonder whether there is any unmet demand for their product,” seemingly oblivious to the irony that he’s writing these words for one of the 500,000 to one million culture blogs, newsletters, online-only mags out there.
Lastly, we re-watched In And Of Itself last night. If you’ve never seen it, it’s streaming on Hulu, so do me & yourself a favor and a) watch it, b) don’t look up ANYTHING about it before watching it. It hit me a lot differently in the wake of Dad’s death than it did when I first saw it, a few weeks after turning 50, when it was part of my impetus to take up drawing.
Current/Recent Reading
I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition - Lucy Sante
Acceptance: Book 3 of The Southern Reach - Jeff VanderMeer (finished)
True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen - Lance Richardson (finished)
I Want to Die, I Hate My Life: Three Essays on Tragedy and One on Beckett - Simon Critchley
+ the mourner’s Kaddish every morning, in Aramaic
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
Man, I found all sorts of excuses to blow off workouts Wed-Fri, before getting back to yoga on Saturday. Missed meditation a couple times, too. Sure need to rebalance myself.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll back on Wednesday, MAYBE with a new episode to share if you people will send some Ask Me Anything questions, plus a throwback Instax and maybe some art. On Sunday I’ll be back with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
No one’s gotta listen to / The words in my head / Someone hit the big score / And figured it out / And I’m gonna do it anyway / Even if it doesn’t pay,