Interview: Emily Horne & Joey Comeau of “A Softer World” by Aaron Matthews
Emily Horne is a Victoria, B.C. based photographer and Joey Comeau is a Toronto, ON based writer. Together they create the critically acclaimed webcomic “A Softer World”. In 2007, the comic won the first Web Cartoonist's Choice Award for photographic webcomic and Loose Teeth Press published “It's Too Late to Say I'm Sorry”, a collection of Comeau’s short stories. “A Softer World” celebrated its 5th anniversary earlier this year. I talked to Emily and Joey via email about the process of creating a strip and the strange power of cover letters, among other things.
Where did the idea for "A Softer World" come from?
Emily: Joey started making photocopied comics in 2001 using his own captions and photos cut out from magazines about the British royalty. When the possibilities of that had run out, he decided photos might work, and I, being inclined to photography, had a good stash of them ready to go. We would take an old manual Smith-Corona typewriter and a stack of photos to the all night Kinko's in Halifax and make comics for the local 'zine fairs. We made two print editions and then decided in 2003 to put them online so more of our friends could see them. These comics make up the first couple of dozen that are currently on the website.
What's the process for creating a comic? How do you and Joey work on the comic together?
EH: The process for creating the comic is very now different than it used to be. I live in B.C. and Joey lives in Toronto, so the process isn't as immediately collaborative as it used to be. Usually I will put together the visual elements of several comics, cut and paste as necessary, and send them to Joey every few weeks. That way he has a backlog of comics to caption. Usually he runs the text by me before they go up, either by email or via MSN.
Why do you think ASW's format is effective?
Joey: The format's good on a few practical levels. Having the photos illustrate the text directly would have been a nightmare for us, I think. We could have people acting out the scenes but we'd be limited in the kinds of stories we could tell. Zombies? Exploding stars? All impossible. So we chose a format where Emily and I try and find the same tone for the words and images, or different tones that work well and compliment one another. For the text, having it be so short means that I have to work to fit everything into that one sentence or two. It makes the impact stronger. It's a lot of information at once sometimes, and that's great. I like writing for constrained space. I have to work harder to make everything work, but I think it comes off with more of a punch.
Joey, explain the concept of Overqualified for the uninitiated. Why is the cover letter the perfect medium for this strange combination of despair and hope?
JC: I've written so many regular cover letters while applying for jobs. They're frustrating and useless and they are just lies, beginning to end. You are saying what they want to hear. These letters don't have anything to do with you as a person or with your hopes for the future, your dreams. Nobody reads these anyway. You could write the craziest things and nobody would ever read them.
So I did. I started writing batshit crazy cover letters and sending them out. At first they were just jokes and frustrations, but hopes and dreams started sneaking into them. In December I signed a book deal with a publisher here in Toronto to release a novel based on Overqualified. It's going to come out in [Spring] 2009, and it is told entirely through the cover letters. It's probably the craziest thing I've written, and I am super excited about it.
Are there any common thematic threads joining your writing, between A Softer World, Overqualified, and your fiction? JC: I got an email a little while ago from someone who attended a book club where they were reading my short story book. He said they liked it, but they were all pretty sure that I was a paranoid weirdo. A lot of the stories are about obsessions and people who do things without really knowing why, just knowing that they have to do them. But I think that most of my writing is optimistic in a weird way, too. Anyway, I feel optimistic about it. There's a lot of sex in my writing, too. I don't know about themes. There are a lot of zombies and dead moms and lesbians. That's sort of a running joke between Emily and I, but it never stops being true. There are a lot of zombies and lesbians and dead moms. One day I'll write a story about a zombie lesbian mom.
What’s the usual reaction to the strips? Sometimes when I read ASW, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. EH: Sometimes I feel like it's unfortunate that ASW is called a comic, because it means people go into the experience of reading it with the notion that it’s always going to be funny and end up disappointed. Even those that are overtly hilarious usually manage to make you feel a bit guilty about your laughter. It's a complicated world out there. Few things are black-and-white, funny-or-not-funny, and ASW reflects that. Reactions to the comic run the gamut from delight and recognition to (occasionally) vehement hatred, and while the angry reactions are hard to take, we do stand by what we've created.
Read a longer version of this interview at Aaron's blog here.
Amplive is the producer of the Bay Area hip-hop duo Zion I. Along with MC Zion, Amp has stood at the forefront of the second generation of underground hip-hop in the Bay, following in the footsteps of artists like Hieroglyphics and Hobo Junction. More recently, Amp has broadened his production resume, producing among others Kafani's hyphy hit "Fassst Like A Nascar" and Goapele's R&B hit "Closer." Zion I's most recent album is a collaboration with Living Legends' Grouch called "Heroes in the City of Dope." (See the video for Hit 'Em f. Mistah FAB above)
Amplive recently made national headlines with his album "Rainydayz Remixes," a full remix album of Radiohead's recent "In Rainbows" release. After receiving a cease-and-desist from the band's management, Amp has finally obtained the rights to legally release the album free over the internet. It features Bay Area hip-hop superstars like Too $hort and Del tha Funky Homosapien. I interviewed Amp via email as he prepared for Zion I's "Fresh Coast" tour with Mistah FAB, which kicks off February 29th in San Jose.
Jesse Thorn: You've continued to consolidate your underground success with Zion I, but you've also produced a few local radio hits that are more Hyphy than "backpacker." To what extent are you serving two separate audiences there? Do you do it consciously? Does the uniqueness of the Bay Area scene contribute to how this all plays out?
Amplive: I just make the music that I feel and like. Out here in the Bay the audiences arent as separate as you think. There are a big variety of national groups that come from here. you have groups like Souls of Mischief, DJ Shadow, Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, Anticon to groups like E40, Too Short, Mista Fab, Kafani, and The Pack. Those audiences merge all the time. That;s what makes making music in the bay for a producer like me easy.
JT: You're a hip-hop producer, though you've produced some R&B records and certainly have a lot of other influences in your work. What's the connection between hip-hop and Radiohead?
A: Well, one of the reasons that I really started digging Radiohead was that they always had a few songs on their record that had a hip hop feel to it. Whether it was the drums they used or the steady pattern of the beat, it had a hip hop feel. You have a song like "National Anthem" or "Karma Police” that not only sounded tight but you could actually spin in a mix. Those elements set them apart from other rock groups.
JT: What separates hip-hop and Radiohead?
A: Well honestly, the way music has merged so much these days, the only thing I think that separates them from hip hop is that there they aren’t rapping.
JT: Was there a track on the remix album that was particularly exciting for you? Why?
I would have to say that remixing the song "Weird Fishes" really felt good. The original sounds so damn good. Every step I took in tweaking it just felt great and I didnt make any changes to what I was doing. That rarely happens.
JT: Is remixing a Radiohead album part gimmick? Why do a whole record?
A: I dont know what the gimmick would be if it was one. I am a music producer and I create remixes. I liked the In Rainbows album so much that I wanted to remix all of it.
Amplive's Rainydayz Remixes is available free here. You can find Zion I online at zioncrew.com.
Interview: Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller of "What We're Not Writing" by Rob Baedeker
Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller are Emmy-nominated writers whose credits include CBS’s “Late Show With David Letterman,” Comedy Central’s “The Showbiz Show With David Spade,” and MTV’s “The Andy Dick Show.” When the Writers Guild went on strike in November, they launched a new website, “What We’re Not Writing." Rob Baedeker interviewed the pair this week.
Describe your site, “What We’re Not Writing,” and tell me how it got started.
GM: Every day we’ve been posting a description of the show or movie we’re not working on because we’re on strike. The idea was to bring the studios to their knees by letting them know the brilliance they’re missing out on.
JG: We know there are important issues at stake, but we felt like a lot of writers were starting to take themselves too seriously, as far as the contribution they’re making to society with “One Tree Hill” or whatever. So we decided to make fun of that a little.
These unwritten scripts are jokes, but have you come up with any that actually seem viable? For example, I would watch "Small Plates, Big Problems", a feature screenplay about a petty thief on the run from the mob who hides out by opening a tapas bar.
GM: Really? Do you want to buy it? 35 bucks.
JG: Most of the time, we try to play on some recognizable genre or premise or character, but we try to make the idea a little bit worse in some way. But it’s a fine line. We don’t want to get too wacky. We’d rather err on the side of “I could imagine them making that.”
GM: Sometimes we come up with the title first, usually a bad pun, and then figure out what the show or movie would be.
JG: In general, we’ve realized that it’s a lot easier to come up with ideas not to write than ideas to write.
Do you each have personal-favorite entries?
JG: Asking us to choose between these horrible ideas is like asking us to choose between our children. In that having children was also a horrible idea.
GM: I like anything where the story is set in motion by someone getting struck by lightning. So that’s been a recurring theme.
JG: But we do have a place on the site where other writers can post what they’re not writing, and some of those have been really funny. Like “Keepin’ It Zipped!”, a teen sex comedy about a bunch of guys trying not to lose their virginity.
GM: And I also liked the one-stop TV drama called “Detective Law, M.D.”
What’s the worst idea you’ve actually pitched (as non-striking writers)?
GM: We pitched a movie called “Mathletes,” which played all the conventions of a sports movie in the world of high school math. But we were told that for some reason audiences wouldn’t want to watch kids do math for an hour and a half.
JG: And we once put together a pitch for an idea a production company had, which was basically that a kid wakes up to find he has an alien penis. That was before we realized we were allowed to say no to things.
Is that true?
GM: Yes, unfortunately. The idea was something about how when you go through puberty, you feel like you’re an alien, and making that literal. But it pretty much boiled down to “alien penis.”
Has it been cathartic to step out of the industry and parody it?
JG: A lot of the writing we’ve done, especially on late-night shows, even though it’s done within the industry, has sort of a critical point of view, making fun of all the crap that’s out there. So it’s not new to us, but it’s definitely fun.
GM: Also, since back on The Andy Dick Show, we’ve loved writing characters who are overly confident idiots, and in a way, we get to be those guys on the blog.
JG: So, yes, it’s been nice to “step out of the industry” for a while, but we can’t wait to step in it again. We want to step in it so good that we can’t wipe it off, and it starts stinking up the place, and you try to take an old toothbrush to it, but at some point you realize you’re just going to have to throw out the shoes. Wait, what are we talking about?
There are rumors that the strike may be ending soon. Are you going to continue to do the blog? Has it been fun enough to keep it going, or was it just a way to kill time? Have you been getting a lot of good response to it?
JG: We’d like to keep some kind of Miller & Green website going. We don’t know exactly what it’ll be, but this has been fun to do, and a good way to make sure we write at least one joke every day. And it seems to be getting a good response, and even some press. Which is fun, too.
GM: I guess the first thing we’ll do on the blog is take a lot of credit for ending the strike. It took over 60 unwritten projects, but it worked. You’re welcome, America.
Interview: Comedian Chelsea Peretti, by Aaron Matthews
Photo by Zach Klein
Chelsea Peretti is a NY-based comedian, writer, and member of the 4-woman sketch group, the Variety Shac. She is the co-creator of the New York CityRejection Line at (212) 479-7990 and of the web satire blackpeopleloveus.com. She is also the creator of two original series for online humour site SuperDeluxe: "All My Exes" & "Making Friends with Chelsea Peretti". Variety Shac recently released their first DVD collecting their short videos and sketches and they are currently working on a pilot for Adult Swim. I spoke to Chelsea over IM about her influences, her writing career and her inspiration for her internet series, "All My Exes."
AM: Who were your favourite comedians growing up?
CP:I liked all kinds of stuff. My dad loved Jonathan Winters so he introduced me to him.
I saw Martin Lawrence perform when I was in Jr. High. I loved Gilda Radner, I Love Lucy, The Wonder Years, Cosby Show, Monty Python, and Steve Martin movies like The Jerk and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. I had a birthday party where we watched Top Secret. I liked Married with Children lots and Roseanne. I can't really remember as much with standup. I know I watched [Eddie Murphy’s] Raw with my grandmother. That was lame watching it with her. And Def Comedy Jam when I was in Jr. High was big, and In Living Color.
AM: How did Variety Shac end up coming together?
CP: Well, Andrea [Rosen] and Heather [Lawless] and I did standup and knew each other from that.
AM: Had you, Heather, and Andrea collaborated at all at this point, beyond performing at the same shows?
CP: No, just all guesting on other peoples shows. We all wanted to make short films and decided we would premiere a new short at every show (our show is monthly.) It was a really fun homey feeling and a great place to try new bits.It was my first experience with shooting and editing and basically telling a story or making jokes on film. I learned so much.
AM: What is your writing process like for the media you mostly work with?
CP: For standup, the best jokes seem like they come up in conversation or in the shower or travelling. But also lately finding more stuff onstage. Sketch I don't do much anymore. But Bobby [Tisdale] and I used to sort of talk through ideas and improvise them, then get onstage and do them. The Shac shorts are largely improvised but we try to discuss the overall concept and shape. And each of us will usually bring something a line or a bit or a character we want to involve.
All My Exes I scripted. I have a flow outlined and some good lines ready - but then had the exes improvise responses to my questions.
AM: Where did the idea for All My Exes come from?
CP: I can't remember. I went in to talk to Mark and Daniel Weidenfeld [of Super Deluxe] about it. There were various ideas and that one we all got into and tossed around ideas. It just was the one that got us all excited. One thing I've always thought would be if you could put all the people you've dated into a room or photo. Just how funny the photo would be, just lots of different types of people, like a circus.
And I've also always thought the idea of journalists being objective was funny. So the idea of putting something so subjective (matters of the heart) and so clearly personal into this journalistic interview format was funny to me.
AM: You have a lot of online projects, including your blog, the Super Deluxe series and your web projects with "The New York City Rejection Line" & "Black People Love Us". Do you think the internet has opened a new venue for comedians who might not otherwise get much exposure outside of their local scenes?
CP: I think the internet is so saturated now that you're not really guaranteed "exposure"just because you upload a clip. Maybe your friends will see it but I still think you need to be talented and/or aggressive/strategic to have any kind of high impact project online. Or be a freak show that people will laugh at or have a heckler attack you during your set, etc. The kind of things internet people will flock to.
AM: What else are you working on?
CP: I am going to LA at the end of the month to do some shows with Fred Armisen. I just opened for him in Tallahassee at FSU. Doing lots of standup. Oh, and Shac - we are working on our pilot for Adult Swim.
AM: Are the four of you still in the process of writing it?
CP: Yeah, getting closer. It's really cool so far.
AM: Is it all new material or is it like the Human Giant MTV series where some of the older stuff is revamped with newer stuff?
CP: Well, there's a very new feel to it in lots of secret ways!
To read a longer version of this interview, visit Aaron’s blog here.
Necessity is supposedly the mother of invention but what about creativity? Minneapolis duo Beatrix*JAR (she's Beatrix, he's JAR) stand somewhere in between the worlds of technology and the arts. They are circuit benders. What that means is that they take electronic instruments and toys that make sound, open them up and play around until they make new sounds the manufactures never intended. They turn these explorations into music, putting out two records now I Love You Talk Bird and Golden Fuzz. In addition to playing shows the duo also put on workshops so that others can learn the fun of crafting new sounds out of old toys. I talked to the Beatrix*JAR about their particular brand of music.
Ian Brill: Some of the songs on I Love You Talk Bird like "Oral Fixation" combine the circuit bending sounds with singing and lyrics. The songs on Golden Fuzz are more like dance songs with these hypnotic beats under them. Why the move in that direction?
Beatrix*JAR: Our move into the dance direction stems from our experiences as live performers. We aren’t trained musicians and we found that when we were doing live vocals it was easy to get to get thrown off by different and unfamiliar environments and various sound systems. With Golden Fuzz instead of singing live we sampled our voices in the safety of our studio for a few tracks.
I Love You Talk Bird was a mellow experience (in terms of tempo) but we found with the more songs we created our natural progression grew into experimenting more with tempo and rhythm. We also find that the faster beats in live performance engage us more as performers and that energy passes on to the audience.
IB: Where did the idea to do not just shows but also workshops come from?
B*J: Honestly, it stems from the fact that people didn’t really understand what we were (are) doing sonically. The workshops became this way to inform and inspire people with hands-on circuit bending and also give them the language and experience to understand what circuit bending is – and we hope that with that knowledge they will approach our music and other benders music with open ears and maybe be inspired to make music this way themselves.
IB: What are some of the best toys you have found in your quest for new sounds?
B*J: The Casio MT-540 is always our favorite, we use it as the demo machine in our workshops and it never fails – the machine is unlimited in its sonic options.
IB: I know JAR started doing work like this alone. What is the benefit of being a duo. I imagine it's a lot more fun trying to find the right sound from a 1980's toy with two people than it is with one.
B*J: We reinforce one another. We’re the two people always dancing at the show.
Maybe it all comes down to chemistry. We have unique and shared musical sensibilities and it just works – there are these unspoken exchanges that make for this fun and playful experience. It’s always so great to look onstage and see the other – nodding – affirming – dancing.
Each of us is always encouraging the other - so when one of us hits the wall the other is there to help bust through – even in the most intense moments of frustration we are happy to be there for each other – 80’s toy or life issue.
IB: In addition to manipulated toy sounds songs some of the songs on Golden Fuzz have these great speech samples, like the one about a kid creating a DIY robot in "Arthur Golden" (which is related to what you guys do musically); Where are the places you find the sources for those samples?
B*J: Like circuit bending, it’s really all about searching for sounds that are pleasing to our ears. We find audio sources from reel to reel tapes, old records, archive.org, old drive-inn movie intermission reels, training and instructional videos. Some of the speech samples come from the Speak and Spell too. There is some quality that catches our ear that works as a building block to the composition. With Arthur Golden it was the Do It Yourself Robot – we were like yes! *Laughing*
Interview: Antoine Wilson, author of "The Interloper" by Tim Noble
One of the great things about hosting a show about things you think are awesome is that people who share your values listen -- and often they're awesome themselves. Novelist Antoine Wilson and I had emailed about the show before I even knew he was a writer. When he wrote a new (and highly critically acclaimed) book, "The Interloper," I had former intern Tim Noble, a fiction writer himself, talk with him about the book and writing. - Jesse
Tim Noble: The Interloper hinges on a very unique and rather drastic decision by its protagonist. How did the idea for The Interloper come about? How much was plotted beforehand and how much came about "in the moment"?
Antoine Wilson: I can trace the origins of the germ to a single thought I had while cruising eastbound on the I-80 in a silver Lincoln Town Car in the summer of 1998. The thought was this: What if, at one of these gas stations, or behind the desk of one of these motels, or in a random bar, what if I ran into the man who had murdered my half-brother almost twenty years before? What would I do? That germ remained in the back of my head another four years before it turned into Owen’s cockamamie plan. As far as plotting goes, it was all plotted “in the moment.” Only that moment lasted two years.
TN: Do you think it's possible to write a novel so closely dealing with death without the type of experience you went through?
AW: Absolutely it’s possible. Thinking deeply about experiences that are not your own is one of the novelist’s most crucial muscles. It’s the quadriceps, for heavy lifting. But of course the biceps get all the attention. In any case, what I meant by my statement was simply that I wouldn’t have chosen the subject matter if it hadn’t come from personal experience. I’m not interested in writing crime fiction, per se.
TN: The book deals in some dark and strange areas of the human psyche, but at the same time, contains a good bit of humor and reads fairly quickly. Is there a line between literature and "pop" fiction, and, if so, do you give much thought to what category your own writing might fall under? I'm thinking during the editing process particularly.
AW: I’ve been trying to define some of these things for myself recently, so it’s good you ask. My working distinction between so-called pop or genre fiction and so-called literature is that while the former aims to create a specific, almost programmatic experience for the reader, the latter is more open to how it is read and received. You get the sense in the former that the writer has created an entertainment, whereas with the latter the writer is engaged in trying to understand or bring order to human experience.
Of course there are genre and/or pop books that go quite deep despite their trappings, and there are plenty of literary-labeled stories of struggle and redemption that are no more than potboilers. I don’t think too much about what category I belong to; I’m aspiring to literature all the time, in that I’m more interested in creating something organic and true than perfecting an entertainment. That said, The Interloper is a fairly lean and tight machine—the fact that Owen is pursuing a plan pushed it in that direction, I think. I pared away quite a few thematically-based digressions before the manuscript went out. It didn’t have to do with making it more pop or less literary; I was just staying true to the concerns of the book.
TN: What led you into fiction writing? Was there a particular moment that the light bulb went on, and you thought, "This is what I want to do for a living?"
AW: Who makes a living? Perhaps it would be better to say, “This is what I want to do with my life.” For me it happened somewhere in the middle of college. I had always written, had always wanted to write, but it wasn’t until I decided to quit my job as an EMT and decide not to apply to medical school that I put my chips down, so to speak. I was influenced in this decision by three books (all of which I’m afraid to go back and read now): The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster; Another Country by James Baldwin; and V. by Thomas Pynchon. I don’t know exactly how those three worked their magic on me, but they did.
TN: You attended the prestigious writer's workshop at the University of Iowa. Could you talk about your experience there? Many aspiring writers today see an MFA as the only logical step after college – are these workshops worth all the hype?
AW: I had a great experience at Iowa. Two years under the umbrella of the academy with no goal other than to write fiction. I’m sure I picked up lots of craft tips, and I know I became a better writer, but I’d say the most valuable lesson I learned was to take myself seriously as a writer. And to begin to take myself seriously as a human being. As far as the hype, well, you know what Public Enemy had to say about that. I don’t mean to be glib. In general I highly recommend MFA programs for people who really want to write—at the very least you become a better reader and a better critic of your own work. I just wouldn’t suggest going into massive debt to attend one.
TN: You occasionally teach writing classes at UCLA. How do you approach the prickly task of teaching others to write, a talent some would say falls under the category of "you either have it or you don't"? Has the experience helped your own writing at all?
AW: I have no idea whether teaching helps my writing. They’re two very different things, and I’m always struggling to bring them together. While it’s probably true that “you either have it or you don’t,” I’m not sure it’s my job to be the judge. I remember my own early stories. They blew chunks. Misguided, immature, poorly developed chunks. So I try to nudge people forward in doing whatever it is they’re trying to do. And while I encounter a lost cause now and then, every once in a while someone blows my socks off, which is always a treat.
AW: Who's the best author we've never heard of?
AW: If you haven’t heard of Thomas Bernhard, it’s Thomas Bernhard. If you have, it’s Bohumil Hrabal. If you’ve heard of him, too, maybe Lars Gustafsson. If all of those are old news, try the stories of Maile Chapman or Jack Livings—neither of them have a book yet, so you probably haven’t read too much of them. If you have, how about Eric Bennett? You’ll have to wait on him, but it will be worth it.
If you want to see some of the raves for Antoine Wilson's new novel "The Interloper," just visit the front page of his website, where they are tastefully laid out.
Interview: Robert Jackson, The Art of the American Snapshot 1888 - 1978.
“The Art of the American Snapshot 1888 – 1978” is currently running in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, until 31st December 2007. The exhibition features photos from the collection of Robert E. Jackson from Seattle, one of the country’s premier snapshot collectors. I spoke to Robert about the exhibition and all things ‘snapshotty’ – here’s what he had to say.
EMcD: How would you define a snapshot?
RJ: The snapshot can be defined as a democratic photographic phenomena arising out of the technological advances in the mechanics of camera processing. This produced a product which allowed the amateur to take photos with some of the same degree of ease and sophistication as found in professional photography at a cost which was affordable. The act of taking a snapshot is personal response to a moment involving telling a story using the camera as a surrogate for memory.
EMcD: How did you go about accumulating these photographs over the years?
RJ: My interest in snapshots grew out of an earlier interest in paper ephemera. I liked the content of the snapshots--the tricks, the odd poses and costumes, the small jewel-like nature of the medium. And probably most importantly snapshots were inexpensive relative to other types of photographic mediums, and they were plentiful which meant I could build a collection with some ease. One can collect fingers obscuring the lens, photo emulsion mistakes, gay interest photographs, badly tinted photos, photos where faces have been scratched out, photos of pit bulls, photographer shadows, the notations on the backs of photos. Also this most democratic of photographic mediums could have only been built using the internet and most specifically Ebay which allowed me to network with dealers and be exposed to items from around the United States and often the world on a daily basis.
EMcD: You've assembled a huge array of photos spanning a 90 year period in American history. What themes does the exhibition explore?
RJ:The exhibition explores the creativity of the snapshooter and how cultural influences impacted the ways in which the photographer interacted with the times as well as with friends and family. The personal, intimate nature of the snapshot and the often voyeuristic impulses of the snapshooter are highlighted through the portrayal of sleeping photos throughout the time period. The issue of remembrance, narrative, and rituals within the snapshot genre are shown via the presentation, through the decades, of birthday cakes.
EMcD: What impact did the introduction of easily accessible photography have on life in America during the period examined?
RJ: It provided the general population an affordable means to create a narrative of their life. Their ability to record the world around them and to interact, via taking a picture, in the historical and familial events by which they were surrounded allowed for the preservation of a slice of American life which we now can experience and attempt to understand from a sociological and aesthetic vantage point.
EMcD: Since 1978 technology has improved dramatically and the way we now view images has totally changed. Does the fact that we now view many of our photos via computers and not captured as actual physical prints ruin the concept of the snapshot?
RJ: Technology has not necessarily improved in relation to the creation of the snapshot, but rather has changed, and via such change has impacted our way of thinking about the taking and making of a snapshot. Once the price decreases and the ease of taking and editing a snapshot increases, photos which don’t fit within the accepted canon of what a “good” snapshot should be are often eliminated (in that sense one could say something has been “ruined”). Thus the manner in which we interact with our snapshots, our memory, has changed. Snapshots are not viewed anymore as private documents, but rather are viewed as something to exhibit in the public sphere via websites such as Flickr.
As part of the exhibition, the documentary “Other People’s Pictures” will screen on November the 21st and 23rd at 1.00pm in the Gallery. The 53 minute piece tracks nine collectors as they hunt for images of people they do not know. Co-producer of the documentary Lorca Shepperd was a previous guest on TSOYA. Listen to the interview with Lorca Shepperd
Interview: Meredith Gran, creator of "Octopus Pie" by Aaron Matthews
Meredith Gran is the Brooklyn-based comic artist and animator behind the webcomics “Skirting Danger” and most recently, “Octopus Pie.” The latter series tells the serio-comic story of Eve and Hanna, 2 young women living in Brooklyn, New York.
Meredith recently self-published a collection of the first four storylines of “Octopus Pie” and just began the sixth storyline of the comic.
AM: When did you first consider cartooning specifically as a career, as opposed to art? You started writing Skirting Danger when you were about 16, if I remember correctly. Meredith: Yeah, I was a teenager. At the time I didn't really see it as anything more than a hobby. I only began thinking about comics as a career in the past year or so, after working out of school for a bit. Seeing how other professional cartoonists operate. AM: What was it like writing a reasonably popular and well-regarded webcomic at that age? Meredith: At the time I was very excited to have that storytelling outlet. Looking back, I'm actually shocked at how well-received it was. At the time, I figured a handful of people, a lot of my friends, enjoyed it. People ask me about it all the time and it seems so long ago. It's very strange. AM: How much of Octopus Pie is autobiographical? It's definitely very Brooklyn-centric and much of it, particularly the more serious storylines, feels authentic and lived-in. Meredith: None of the stories are true, per-se, but a lot of the themes are taken directly from experience. Eve has definitely gone through a few of my internal struggles. In a recent storyline she's faced with the prospect of forging her identity out of a lucrative career - or lack thereof. In my post-college years, I've asked myself many of the same questions Eve has to work through. AM: Have you ever considering syndicating Octopus Pie? A few of your contemporaries, namely Diesel Sweeties and Dinosaur Comics have been syndicated in some smaller press papers. Meredith: It hasn't crossed my mind. The comic isn't much of a daily strip; there's too much context to understand if you miss a day. If you can't press the "back" button with my stories, a lot of the effect is lost. Plus syndication just doesn't seem all that lucrative for a comic my size. AM: In a lot of ways, the form fits the content really well, at least in terms of having the entire storyline up to that point as accessible. Meredith: Webcomics are kind of similar to telenovelas in that way. AM: One last question to wrap things up: describe Octopus Pie in one sentence. Meredith: Haha, this one is hard. AM: Don't rush it. This is crucial. Meredith: It's a Brooklyn drama about a girl's comedic life.
Octopus Pie is published three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Watch video of Meredith drawing here. The unedited version of this interview is available here on Aaron's blog.
Within the first week I lived in San Francisco the second edition of Broke-Ass Stuart's Guide to Living Cheaply in San Francisco was shoved into my hands. For the first few months I took settling in it was my urban bible. I discovered great independent bookstores, free BBQ and, most importantly, cheap and good Mexican food. Now Broke-Ass Stuart's popular 'zine get a new life a book published by Falls Media. Now anyone coming to San Francisco, either moving here or as a tourist, can get their hands on one of the sharpest guides to discovering the best (and least wallet-damaging) parts of the city. Broke-Ass Stuart's book release party will happen at the Rickshaw Stop on Thursday, November 15th.
Ian Brill: Somewhere in between The Golden Gate Bridge and Gay Pride, one of the things San Francisco is best known for is the high cost of living. People have to stretch a dollar to pay rent. Was that the inspiration for the originally guide to living cheaply?
Broke-Ass Stuart: Yeah, that was totally one of the reasons. I was working at a candy store in North Beach, when I first came up with the idea and as you can imagine I wasn't really making too much money. I also knew that most of my friends were in the same shitty financial situation as myself, so it just made sense to write something for all of us that any broke person could use. But the idea really happened when a guy from my neighborhood growing up came into the candy store with his fiancé. I hadn't seen him for years and after chatting for awhile his fiancé gave me her card and told me to holler at them if I was in San Diego. I looked at her card and it said that she was a travel writer, and at that point I said to myself, "Shit, I wanna be a travel writer" and I decided to be one.
IB: I remember walking down Valencia St. and all the used bookstores seemed to have the original guide. A few even had displays for it. How did your promote yourself once your work hit the streets?
BB: Honestly, the zine practically promoted itself. There was a lot of word of mouth and I guess people would tell their friends about it and it would just get passed along that way. I met some girls from Ireland who had been given the zine by a friend who had spent the summer in SF. They were pretty excited to meet me; they thought I was way cooler than I really am. As for the stores, I would just go into them and be like "Hey. I do this really cool zine. Do you wanna carry it?" and then once they carried it I'd go back to them and talk them into putting it on display. I'd be like "You know Dog-Eared Books sells out of these every other week because it is on display at the counter. Maybe you could put it on display too." And a lot of times they would do it. Really though, I think a lot of the success has simply come from being nice to people. It's amazing how often people forget that if you are sweet and genuine with other humans, most of the time they will be sweet and genuine with you. It also helps that I have dimples :)
IB: What did you change for the new Falls Media version of the book?
BB: One of the greatest things about the guys at Falls Media is that I didn't have to compromise any of my style of shit-talking for them. In fact they encouraged it. That's one of the benefits of going with an independent publisher. Really the only thing I had to change was that I had to talk a little less shit on stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders because, well, the are gonna sell a lot of my book. So we just changed a few references so that I talked shit on other big box stores like Best Buy. As far as I'm concerned all those companies are the same anyway. They just run the little guy out of town.
Otherwise the guys at Falls Media have really enabled the guide to grow into a full book. Tons more info, tons more photos, and even some maps by the lovely and amazing Angie Hathaway. This thing is unbelievably cool. Is it ok to say that about my own shit? Oh well, it's true.
IB: This a question that will mean a lot to Jordan Jesse Go listeners: Ashkon will be playing your book release party. Do you expect a lot of hottubbin' during that late night?
BB: That's right! Ash was on their show huh? He's great isn't he? I'm a big fan of his music and he's a good friend of mine. I'm going to make a special request that he plays the song just to get all the ladies in the mood....ha ha ha. I don't know if there's gonna be any hottubbin' for me that night, I'll have to check with my girlfriend. Considering that she and I are staying somewhere without a hottub, maybe there will be some bathtubbin' on the late night. But probably not. Most likely I'll just pass out.
Broke-Ass Stuart can be found at his own website where you can read excerpts of the original 'zine. The book release party will happen Thursday Nov. 15th at the Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St. in, where else?, San Francisco.
Paul & Storm with Jonathan Coulton (center) Photo by Aaron Haley
Together Paul Sabourin and Greg “Storm” DiCostanzo are professional singing persons Paul & Storm, who comprised ½ of comedic a capella group Da Vinci’s Notebook. Da Vinci’s Notebook has been on hiatus since 2004 but still occasionally reunite for corporate events. Paul & Storm are currently touring with noted troubadour and TSOYA guest Jonathan Coulton. Their latest album, Gumbo Pants, was released online on August 26. I corresponded with Paul and Greg via email and asked them some questions about making a career of music & comedy.
Aaron: What made you want to get into the lucrative genre of musical comedy?
PAUL: The short answer: it was the only thing we were really good at. The somewhat longer answer: we started out in 1994 in an a cappella group called Da Vinci's Notebook, which started as a little hobby group that only did covers. The songs that seemed to be the most fun and get the best audience response were songs by another a cappella group called the Bobs, who did a lot of funny originals. So we drifted towards that, and Storm and I fell into a writing partnership, as we have similar backgrounds (children of the '80s and lovers of all pop culture) and compatible senses of humor; so we started writing songs in a similar vein. Before we knew it, we were the main writers for what had evolved into a full-time comedy a cappella group.
When that group stopped performing in 2004, Storm and I desperately wanted to avoid getting real jobs, so we tried performing as a duo, and with a good degree of adjustment (like getting comfortable with playing an instrument and singing at the same time), it worked pretty well.
What's your writing process like?
STORM: We don't have a single set process. Sometimes an idea will strike one of us out of the blue and the other will have just a few tweaks, or add what Lennon and McCartney called "the middle eight". But more often it's comparable to two people working a potter's wheel together. Generally one of us will drop the initial lump of clay (usually a comic hook, song style, and/or a few lines), the brain wheels spin, and we shape it until it's just right, adding more clay as necessary. Sometimes both of our hands are on the clay, sometimes we alternate, and a lot of the time the pot doesn't make it to glazing (chord structure/melody) or the kiln (recording phase) at all.
P: Sometimes it's demand-side-based ("We gotta write a song this week"); and sometimes it's supply-side ("Wow, we should totally write a song about this awesome topic/idea/thing I just thought of/had/saw"). And sometimes they can feed off each other. For example, we were going to be on the [nationally syndicated morning radio program] "The Bob and Tom Show" a couple months back, and wanted to come up with one more new song the night before. While noodling, Storm started doing his awesome James Taylor impression; so we tried to find a way to make a relatively lame thing (impressions in general) somewhat more interesting, so we thought, "well, what if he were...I dunno, on fire?" Which led to our song "If James Taylor Were on Fire", which in turn led to a bunch of other "If" songs ("If Bob Dylan Were Hiding at the Bottom of a Well", "If They Might Be Giants Were the Ice Cream Man", etc.).
So the demand side ("We need a new song for radio tomorrow") dovetailed nicely with the supply side ("We do some impressions; how can we use them in a not-crappy way?").
What would you say are the benefits of distributing your music independently through online stores? Have either of you been approached by labels since DVN or considered signing to one?
S: We haven't been approached by any labels (yet) as Paul and Storm, but in DVN we were, and it just didn't make much sense for us.
The upside [of signing with a label] is that more people will know who you are so that you can draw large numbers of people to your shows, be on the cover of magazines, and otherwise live the rock 'n' roll dream.
That's all fine, but you give up making money on your actual music, and it means that to really make a living you have to be on the road all the time. And while we're by no means geezers, we like being home and not waking up every morning in a hotel room wondering what city we're in.
P: Labels have been historically good at three things: advancing you cash to get a recording done, putting your record in stores, and coordinating PR. But a) recording technology, home studios and such have made getting a quality recording far more affordable than in decades past; b) retail may not have been made completely obsolete by the Internet, but it's getting damn close; and c) you can hire a PR person independently (since you'd be paying for the PR at a label anyway). So it's far less necessary to be "signed" to achieve a reasonable degree of success. We don't have an unquenchable ambition to be ridiculously famous, so for us, the trade-off is worth it.
Special thanks to Ian Brill for help editing the interview.
You can learn more about Paul & Storm and purchase their music here. To read an unedited version of this interview, visit Aaron's blog here.
Emily Horne is a Victoria, B.C. based photographer and Joey Comeau is a Toronto, ON based writer. Together they create the critically acclaimed webcomic “A Softer World”. In 2007, the comic won the first Web Cartoonist's Choice Award for photographic webcomic and Loose Teeth Press published “It's Too Late to Say I'm Sorry”, a collection of Comeau’s short stories. “A Softer World” celebrated its 5th anniversary earlier this year. I talked to Emily and Joey via email about the process of creating a strip and the strange power of cover letters, among other things. 
