HOLY CRAP! IT'S MOJO NIXON!

So here's the MOJO NIXON interview. If you don't know who he is, try this link or the great man's website.

Note that I wrote the questions, while Crackpot Dave actually asked the great man the questions over the phone. This interview also appears over at the entirely more legible Crackpotpress.com.




In the mid-eighties, at the height of the Reagan-Thatcher era, there was a lot of earnest arena-protest music, U2, Peter Gabriel, Midnight Oil and the like. Tepid stuff, mostly, lyrics that most people would have a hard time arguing with...war is bad, racism is bad, poverty is bad, etc. Whatever nugget of anger that may have existed in the genesis of the song was so blanketed by studio wash that all you that came across was whining.

But there was one voice that managed cut through the crap by being insensitive, funny and celebratory of sex, 'shrooms, and Bigfoot. That'd be MOJO FUCKING NIXON, of course -- no bullshit lyrics gibbered over some primitive ape-man rock and roll. With one whimpy email, we were able to get Mojo put it all back into perspective.

Who can forget such classics as "I Aint Going to Piss in No Jar", a version of “This Land is Your Land" that was probably intended to rock Wooody Guthrie out of his grave and "Stuffin' Martha's Muffin", about a desired sexual congress with MTV VJ Martha Quinn?

10 Albums and 20 Years later, you cannot kill Mojo Nixon. The rock-n-roll redneck prophet’s latest project, a political rantfest called “Lyin’ Cocksuckers” can now be heard on Sirius Channel 102. You can also hear Mojo Daily on Outlaw Radio, also on Sirius.

On to the interview:

Hail, Mojo.

G: So, a batch of cocksuckers got thrown out of office earlier this month, and have been replaced a whole new batch of hatchling cocksuckers. You think we’re better off?

MOJO: Look, the Republicans and the Democrats have been selling us the same bag of shit with different colors on it. You know it’s just a matter of who’s paying the piper. All politicians are whores. You don’t get elected to the Congress or the Senate without getting somewhere between 5 and a 100 million dollars. So somebody is paying those people and who’s ever payin’ is makin’ them dance. So I don’t think there is that big a difference, but I do think the election was a big FUCK YOU to George Bush and his idiotic Iraq policy. You’re gonna hear a lot of talk, I have a political talk show on Sirius 102 Sirius Stars, my political talk show LYIN’ COCKSUCKERS and you are gonna hear a lot of talk about how Iraq was mismanaged. Which is why we had to fire Rumsfeld. Iraq wasn’t mismanaged. IRAQ WAS A BAD IDEA FROM THE BEGINNING. Iraq has ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY nothing to do with 9-11. Saddam Hussein and Bin Ladin are TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and invading Iraq is possibly -- I mean short of dropping a nuclear bomb on Mecca it was the second dumbest thing we could do.

G:Anyone get elected that seems reasonably human to you?

MOJO: Naw, not really. I didn’t see anybody. There is a Senator from Vermont who claims to be a socialist and looks a little crazy. You know how John MCCain has that far away look in his eye? I know John McCain has kind of transformed himself from Maverick to Conservative stalwart here in the last ten years. Whatever they did to John McCain in the Hanoi Hilton, he’s looking at something REAL FAR AWAY that me and you can’t see. Same thing with the Senator from Vermont. He’s looking at something way off in the horizon. In his eyeball Karl Marx is dancing with Frederick Engels way off in the distance.

G: Michael J. Fox, who in 1987-ish you deemed the anti-Elvis, made an appearance this election season in campaign commercial down in
Missouri. Have you ever met up with the dude? Has he gained Elvisness throughout the years?

MOJO: I’ve never met with Michael J. Fox. AND I STAND BY WHAT I SAID. I will not pretend. I don’t care what kind of disease he’s got. I don’t pretend to be an evil yuppie twit, he shouldn’t pretend to be a rock and roller. In that BACK TO THE FUTURE movie, and in that awful Paul Schrader, Joan Jett thing, LIGHT OF DAY which had the Springsteen song which should have been a great working class rock and roll movie. And it’s a TURD! Because Michael J. Fox is in it. I don’t pretend to be an evil yuppie twit, he should not pretend to be a rock and roller. The idea that he invents duck walking and the Chuck Berry guitar riff.

CHUCK BERRY INVENTED THAT. Well, actually it was the guy from Louie Jordan’s band, but that’s a whole other story. The point being is that there is this Louie Jordan song, Caledonia, the famous Chuck Berry riff that’s at the beginning of Johnny B. Goode and all the Chuck Berry Songs (Mojo Performs Riff Here) that is actually from a Louie Jordan Song, Louis Jordan was kinda rock and roll before rock and roll. He was kinda novelty R&B guy in the late 40’s early 50’s, had a ton of hits. He has that guitar riff in the middle of it, only played half as fast. (Mojo does riff here). The Chuck Berry Riff. Nobody’s inventing anything. Everybody is STEALING something.

But back to Michael J. Fox and stem cell research. It just shows the poverty of the intellect, the poverty of the imgagination to say that somehow you are against abortion but you want to keep people crippled. I don’t understand… if you want to help- I understand the urge to want to help. I understand the urge to feed, to clothe, to heal the sick, to get the people good jobs and houses, to give people hope for people who have no hope but to be so crazy as to say “Oh no we can’t do stem cell research or the government can’t fund stem cell research” We MIGHT do something. Kinda like Iraq MIGHT have weapons of mass destruction and MIGHT have a link to Al-Qaeda. I can’t understand people calling themselves religious and being hateful. To me if a preacher is preaching hate, is preaching you to hate your enemies, to fear God... that’s not religion, that’s not helping humanity, that’s organizing an army to defeat somebody.

G: In his endeavor to become the new governor of the Once Great State of Texas, Kinky Friedman unfortunately did not succeed, but it was nice to have a guy that seemed like a human being rather than a haircut. What was getting out on the road with him like? Did you get the sense that people were excited by him?

MOJO: RICHARD KINKY BIG DICK FRIEDMAN, talked to him the other day.I got a great sense that people are sick and tired or regular politics. They’re sick and tired of people just standing there lying. Ya know politicians play this game “oh you know I am lying and I know I am lying but for the sake of political correctness, I have to lie”

Kinky just said what the fuck was on his mind. Ya know from one perspective Kinky should have gotten NO votes. He should have got one or two percent. He got twelve or thirteen percent. He got half a million votes, so that in and of itself is CRAZY, man. A Jewish comedic alt country singer song writer post-Chandler detective novelist gets a half a million votes in TEXAS? It’s amazing. But the other side of the equation is, there was one point in the middle of the summer when I was looking at the polls, I mean I can go online and look at the polls, Kinky was at about 24 percent. The Governor, the incumbent hand picked by George Bush to succeed him, Rick Perry was a bout 33%. All Kinky needed was for Rick Perry to get caught fucking a sheep or something and he could have WON! I talked to Kinky the other day after the election, I’m in San Diego and I called him and thanked him for letting me come along and you gave a good fight and he’s like:

“Now I can I tell you all the damn nasty perverted sex jokes I wanted to tell you during the campaign”

And there is a tape, a friend of Kinky’s, Kinky’s old manager Cleve, Cleve is an old time Austin Hippie and was Kinky’s right hand man for years, he got pushed out during the campaign. Cleve got me a job at a porno magazine. I was doing this thing called the “Poontango Report”

Cleve got a job there and said “Touring rock-N-Roll is gonna kill us. We’re gonna get jobs as editors of Porno Magazines”

I’m like HELL YA. This is a great idea. The greatest thing about working for a porno magazine -- one thing is -- you can say whatever the hell you want! SHIT, NO ONE’S READIN IT! Second thing is, my wife would come out and I would have all these porno magazines out on the floor, and she’d go “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”

I’m looking at the competition, Baby.

So anyways, Cleve’s wife was sick. There was a big benefit for her down in Austin and I went. There were doing some kind of webcast through Digital Club Network. And they say you and Kinky gotta go into this little room and just talk for ten minutes. Kinky said some of the nastiest, craziest, perverted, shit you have ever heard in your life. If they had found the tape Kinky would have gotten negative votes.
Had they found the tape, they would have killed Kinky. They woulda killed Kinky and me. My head would be on Kinky’s body right now. Luckily they didn’t find the tape.

That’s one of Mojo’s rules. No audio, no video evidence. LET THE MYTHS BEGIN MY FRIENDS!!!

G: Mojo, what gives with this alt-country? What’s “alt” about it and what’s country about it? Who would you claim to be the godfathers of Alt-Country?

MOJO:There is a lot, Ryan Adams and No Depression and there is a bunch of snooze grazing sensitive fucks who think that Gram Parsons is the second coming of Bob Dylan that is giving this whole thing a bad name. Kinda of Poindexter types who think too much. The Alt-Country that I am interested in is the “Fuck You” alt country. You know that picture of Johnny Cash giving the finger? Johnny Cash giving the finger, David Allen Coe, THE BEAT FARMERS, the Blasters, you know, George Jones.

GEORGE JONES.

You know, his wife takes the keys away from him. So he drives the lawnmower to the liquor store.

THAT’S what I am talking about.

When country and rock and roll come together… Joe Ely. Joe Ely is the perfect artist. Too country for Rock-n-Roll… Too Rock-N-Roll for country. Steve Earle. He’s been married seven times and had to get off of heroin nine different ways.

Steve Earle has a nice FUCK YOU attitude.

G: What are you rocking out to these days? Do you still tour with the Sonic Love Jug?

MOJO: Naw, I’m retired from touring. We came out of retirement to help Kinky get on the ballot in the Spring, that almost killed me. Sonic Love Jug has been retired for ten years. I haven’t been playing much at all. My bass player Earl Friedman… his wife, something of a hussy, left him. Went off with some other guy. We might have to get the band together next year to get Earl Friedman laid.

We’re not doing it for me. We’re doing it so Earl can get some new poontang.

G: What sort of voodoo is needed to kill Nashville once and for all?

MOJO: Oh, it’ll never die. Nashville.

The thing that you always have to remember is that Britney Spears and Madonna have more in common with today’s Nashville than today’s Nashville has in common with Loretta Lynne and Hank Williams. Those people CAN’T WAIT TO SELL OUT. They’re selling out on the way out.

Selling real hillbilly music is a niche market. It’s like selling Zydeco or Ska or Bluegrass or Rockabilly. There are only so many people that like that kind of music, right?

Occasionally someone may make the cross to the mainstream, someone doing real country music. But they don’t care anything about that; it’s just pop music to them and it has been for a long time.

And most of the guys in Nashville are really just doing the Springsteen, Fogerty, Bob Seger, Johnny Cougar three chord rock. They’re not country. They have more in common with John Cougar than with Hank Williams.

And Garth Brooks, he’s a problem. Garth Brooks biggest influence was James Fucking Taylor; James Taylor and KISS… and he makes both of them look good! You’ve got to imagine, these guys grew up in the 70’s, the guys who are the pretty boy country singers now.

You know I was out with Sirius doing Outlaw Country and Keith Urban played and everyone talked about how good he palyed.

HE STUNK. He was awful. HE put the M in mediocre. I called him Mr. Nicole Kidman and almost got fired.

But hell, it was worth it.

G: In the 80’s you were a vocal opponent of the War on Drugs, suggesting “we should have a war on wars.” Whatever happened to the War on Drugs, did we win? Is it still going on?

MOJO: Oh, it’s still gong on. Police Departments are still getting money. Sooner or later this will all go away. The War on Drugs is still going on.

It’s good business for the jailers, for the prosecutors, for the police departments getting grant money. You know, getting a piece of that DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) grant money so they can buy a tank. The War on Drugs will never be won. There will always be a sheriff in a small town in the middle of nowhere who will turn his head for five minutes for $100,000. In fact, where I grew up in Danville, Virginia… just one county over in Martinsville, Virginia they just had a big deal where the local police who don’t get paid much money were confiscating the drugs from the drug dealers and selling it back to them at 80% of the dealers’ selling price.

They just got caught doing that.

That’s always going to happen.

Eventually all drugs will be legalized. You know people get on their high moral horse. As long as cigarettes and alcohol are legal, you have no moral foot to stand on. As long as drug companies are on the T.V. advertising WHAM-A-SEX or whatever the fuck it is, a purple pill, you have no moral foot to stand on.

Why can’t we, as adults, pick and choose what drugs to kill ourselves with? We’re all going to die, I want to die happy.

G: How’s radio treating you? Lying Cocksuckers, your show on Sirius Satellite, is one of the finest of all frequency modulated products currently available to peckerwoods like me.

MOJO: It’s going fantastic. I was working for awhile for Clear Channel, I went to Cincinnati in 1998, I got fired from talk radio there twice. I was working on a morning show from WNEN and I learned a lot about radio, but I was being handcuffed quite a bit. So I came back to San Diego and I was doing afternoon drive on KGB. I was making a ton of money, but I was not happy. This Sirius thing, Outlaw Country and Lyin Cocksuckers is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

I can play anything I want. Once a week, I play “Tie My Pecker to My Leg” by ME.

I CAN SAY ANYTHING I WANT.

I can say “George Jones sings so good it makes your dick hard. Mojo Nixon, Sirius Satellite Radio.”

And then, I am doing this out of my house is San Diego.

So I can say anything I want, I can do anything I want. I’ve got little to no supervision. On LYIN’ COCKSUCKERS, I even tested it one time to see if someone was secretly listening and say “Oh. No you can’t go that far”

I did fucking ten minutes about Barbara Bush having a clit like a hot dog. Her clit is so big it has little clit’s orbiting around it. NOBODY SAID NOTHING!

I am FREE to SPEAK THE TRUTH!

G: It’s jive, of course, that truly interesting adult type conservation is banished to subscription radio, for the Sake of the Children. Who are these Children and how’d they become such tyrannical bunch of assholes?

MOJO: I don’t know. This whole idea of family values. Ya know, how do you make a family?

Ya make a family by fucking. How do you fuck? By getting nekkid.

So, the two greatest family values are nekkid people fucking.

G: You just started a new Nascar Show on Sirius in addition to Lying Cocksuckers…

MOJO: I just did my preview the other day. It went great. I have been preparing my whole life to do a NASCAR talk show. I think it will all work out real good.

G: Tell me about Nascar. I don’t get it. I don’t get the fans. I don’t get the sport. Enlighten me.

MOJO: I love racing. Did you ever race a Go-Kart as a kid? You go into the turn and there is point when you go too fast and you are going to hit the turn too fast and spin out and hit the wall. There’s another part when you are going too slow. Then there is the racing part when you are in between, on the razor’s edge of adhesion. If you go much faster than that or you break a little less you are going to wreck. If you do it just right, well then, you’ll beat the guy behind you. I grew up around it down South. My Daddy was a big fan.

I LOVE RACING. I LOVE NASCAR.

I love smelling the rubber. I love hearing the sound of the engines, seeing the flames coming out of the exhaust. I love seeing three guys going for one spot down the back straight away. AHH!

You know, it’s really just three guys from North Carolina turning left for no reason. You know what it really is?

It’s an existential need to fill the void, the emptiness that you feel inside. I know your life is empty. I know traditional religion and Lama Lama New Age shit is not fulfilling your life. I’m fulfilling my life with a bunch of rednecks from North Carolina turning left for no good reason. HAHAHAHA!


G: Let me just say that your album “Bo-Day-Shus!!” hipped the teenage me to the fact there were alternatives to wearing khakis and listening to Phil Collins, or wearing eyeliners and listening to Depeche Mode. So, I owe you. Records, you making any?

MOJO: I don’t think so. I made a record around eight years ago called SOCK RAY BLUE, nobody gave a shit. I spent a lot of time on it, writing songs and it’s about the best record I could have made.

I COULD make another record that would be just a different version of SOCK RAY BLUE.

But FUCK, I made ten records, ain’t that enough? I keep thinking I am going get a lot better as singer or a songwriter or a guitar player, but I’m not, I’m a one trick pony. I got three or four kinds of songs I can write and play. They’re okay, but they’re not great.

What people really liked was coming to the show and seeing the monkey show. The greatest thing about the show was Hell Fuck you didn’t know what I was going to say. HAHAHAHAHA. Hell, I didn’t know either.

And DEPECHE MODE: how come they didn’t die in a plane crash? Lynard Skynard gets killed in a plane crash and DEPECHE MODE is as alive as a motherfucker.

G: Who is the biggest lyin’ cocksucker of them all?

MOJO: You know I would tempted to say George Bush, but you know he is just…

You know who the biggest lying cocksucker is? The biggest lying cocksucker of all time is whoever convinced us that the act of creating life is dirty. And that we should be ashamed and we should be ashamed our naked bodies. I really don’t believe that there is a god in the traditional sense of the word. If there is a devil.. that’s who it is.

WHO TRICKED US? Who somehow tricked us into being ashamed of our bodies and creating life? THAT is greatest lying cocksucker of them all.

Interview: Jim, maker of incredibly strange and profane toys.

Obviously, this is not Jim

Friend and sometime commute pal Jim comes from an incredibly large and talented family of musicians, authors, editors, and other sort of fancy pants bohemians.

Jim himself is an author, but the kicker for me is he is also a toymaker. Jim is a co-founder of StrangeCo., “Purveyors of the Peculiar”. He’s also a bit of an art toy evangelist. Here’s a briefish email interview with Jim. He’s cool.

G: So you make… dolls? Toys? Objects d’Art? Thingies? What do you call them?

J: We make collectible vinyl toys, based on original designs by independent artists. They're known by all sorts of descriptive terms - Designer Toys, Urban Vinyl, Art Toys, Fashion Toys.... I do like Thingies, though, certainly the most concise.

In our host high falutin’ moments, we like to think that we are creating accurate, fun 3-D representations of a particular artist's 2-D character design, an in the process making affordable pieces of sculpture art - kind of like a vinyl limited edition print.

G: Who designs them?

J: We work with quite a number of artists, actually, most of whom have had some success in one form of subculture art mode or another - street artists, independent cartoonists, illustrators, etc. To bat around some names for your avid readers: Mars-1,Jim Woodring,Ron English,Friends With You,Gary Baseman,Tim Biskup,Todd Schorr,Kathy Steico-Schorr,tokidoki.... there's a ton more and even more that we'd like to work with, but hey - can't take up too much room in your blog, eh?

G: Do you have an art background?

J: I'm more a man of letters, but I certainly appreciate good visual art.

G: Is “playability” considered when creating your stuff, or is it meant for the shelf?

J: It's actually more about "poseability" than playability - the toys we make usually have a few points of articulation (arms, legs, and neck are the general standard), so you can move the character into a couple of different postures. But we see the advantage of playability, too - we'd like to make the perfect desk fiddler for those nervous moments of pause between typing on the computer and answering the telephone.

G: You’ve commissioned some heavy hitting underground and fancy pantsy comic artists, like Peter Bagge and Jim Woodring. Do they dig what you’re doing? Do the artist ever get hands-on with the production stuff?

J: Yeah, both of those guys like what's going on with the weird toy
thing. It's an opportunity to take ideas that would otherwise only
exist in 2 dimensions and turn it into 3-D, and still retain some of
the feel of a mass-produced publication.

G: How big is the market for art toys in the US versus, say, Japan?

J: Japan, I think, has a more established toy collector culture, and is always "cooler" than the United States. But for what we do, the US
and Europe are bigger markets.

G: You just got back from the San Diego ComicCon. It’s interesting to me because your stuff has more of an urban culture feel in contrast with the whole men-in-tights thang that I associate with Comic cons. How do the more straight ahead comic fanboys approach you guys?

J: Well, Mr. Mills, it just ain't your granddaddy's comic con any more. The San Diego Comic Con is huge now, encapsulating way more than the normal superhero fare. A lot of people attend comic con specifically for the contemporary art angle. Ralph Bakshi has a booth at Comic Con, and this year I met Moebius. How cool is that? With that said, the folks in Batman costumes either like what we do or are indifferent to it. There's something for everyone at comic con now.

G: So, at your desk, it’s late, no one is around. Do you bust out some figures and start making explosion sounds?

J: I have a new USB hub on my desk that makes an auto-destruct sound when you flip a switch, I suppose to stand in for those times when you really feel like blowing up your computer. It makes a nice explosion sound, without me having to screw my face up and risk spittle all over my desk.

G: Can you guarantee that none of your figure will come to life and stab me to death in my sleep?

J: No Chuckies that I'm aware of. You're in good shape and can rest easy.

G: You’ve got smallish kids in your home. Do you play the “Dude, I’m a freakin’ toymaker. You are living with a goddamn TOYMAKER. Do you even comprehend HOW RAD THAT IS?” card very often?

J: Nathaniel, my eldest, who's in 2nd grade, took one of the toys that we sell to his class sharing day. He's already spreading the mystique around without any prompting be me, so I'm saving this card for an occasion of maximum effect. In the mean time, I prefer to rule with an iron fist - with an occasional boom explosion sound, runaway spittle and all.

##
Next up: possibly the promised Mojo Nixon interview?? We shall see. Mojo is a talker not a typer, so friend Dave is going to interview him over the phone. I’m going to China on a business trip, so Dave is handling the interrogation, which works out because I have a horrible, nasally voice.

A major-ish interview is coming up.

Major-ish to me anyway. Mojo Nixon. A hero of my youth and a truly great man. Pal Dave emailed his publicist and I'm going to interview him for Dave's little Internets, crackpotpress.com.

I'm all giddy!

Giant Robot Interview

Here’s another interview. It’s Martin Wong, founding editor of Giant Robot , which is probably the best magazine on the Planet, at least the best magazine about Asian and Asian-American pop culture, with a nice side little business on pointless pop trash, vinyl figures, exploitation cinema and pretty art.

Seriously, if you have a decent newsstand near you, see if you can pick up a copy.
(The interview was done for my friend Dave’s webzine, Crackpot Press.)
***
GREG: First let me get all the embarrassing fanboy gush out of the way so we can move on to more manly things. It’s in the form of a question, so it’s not totally inappropriate.

So, in 12 years you’ve gone from a zine to a freakin’ media empire (a magazine, four storefront galleries, a restaurant and an online store), you have done an amazing job keeping it, well, real. Through a decade of change, you’ve managed to imbue a sense of wonder and guilelessness into every issue. There is no bullshit, no lazy irony, no exploitation, just people talking about interesting stuff they believe in. In other words, it still feels like a zine in very much a good way. How’d you think you’ve kept it that way?

Martin: It’s super important to us that we believe in what we write about. We don’t feel like it’s our responsibility to reflect what’s big or report on things that are trendy. Fuck that! The whole point of having our own mag is to write about what we want. I think readers can tell that we are honestly into the topics of our mag, and not writing articles from press releases or fluffing products from advertisers. By covering a range of stuff—and not just music, toys, art, movies, or whatnot—we not only turn ourselves onto new things every issue, but we lead readers to check out things they blow off otherwise. For example, someone who buys GR for movie-related articles may read something about an artist and get into it. If that reader never reads art mags, the article could be mind blowing! That’s how we feel every issue.

GREG: Your masthead reads “ASIAN POP CULTURE AND BEYOND”. Are you guys on some kind of mission? Do you have a pillow at home with the Twelve Giant Robot Directives sewn into it? Seriously, what sort of responsibilities, if any, do you think you might have to the subject matter you cover? Do you guys have any ambassadorial duties? Do you ever feel protective of your subjects?

Martin: We’re on a mission to document and promote new, neglected, up-and-coming, obscure, and underdog Asian, Asian-American, and hybrid culture. We want readers to know about the stuff that inspires us, and hope it inspires them, too. We are protective, sure, but we are also proud of them and think the world would be better served if it knew about them. The other mission is to get as big as we can without sucking!

GREG: Do you keep the old zines lying around? Do you ever take them out and experience a personal montage sequence, starting at age five when you first saw Ultraman and ending at exactly the moment you found the old zines, stuffed in a shoebox you found in the trunk of the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow you drive now?

Martin: We totally have old copies. I look at them and can hardly believe we crammed so much stuff into each issue. Some of that is because we came out quarterly and didn’t believe in trimming articles. Another factor is that Eric was still doing the design. When Wendy came in, she brought all these new concepts like readability to the table! As for the Silver Shadow, that’s in the shop. I drive a Mazda station wagon. Eric is driving his dad’s old mini-van!

GREG:You see more and more aesthetics from Asian popular culture being appropriated for the US market. Do you see yourself as informing this trend at all, or are you outside of it? Do you ever want to say “I was into those guys since before you were picking your granny’s ass?” And why would you say such an awful thing? Dirty.

Martin: Well, I enjoy the white man’s culture now and then—certain pasty British bands and alcoholic novelists with dysfunctional families. So why can’t others appreciate interesting Asian culture? In the end, I’m all for the evolution and sharing of culture, which builds up to new hybrid manifestations. For example, Guitarwolf is a band that took rock ’n’ roll from America and turned it up to 11. Or a guy like Johnnie To has taken gangster movies and made them beautiful in addition to violence. Then bands or filmmakers from the west take their work and get inspired. Sharing like that is cool. Besides, if we had to rely only on Asian readership, we’d be dead. Most of them have average tastes just like most white, black, brown, or other people.

GREG: Your coverage of art and artists is pretty low key. Not a lick of fancy-pants Art in America theory stuff. What sort of artists end up in Giant Robot, both in the magazine and the galleries?

Martin: To quote Lux Interior from The Cramps, “I don’t know about art but I know what I like.” We can’t really say who’s important or what’s going to last, but we can say what we like. It’s important for us to say why we like things, too, though. That’s one thing that separates us from a vanity publication by some dude jerking off to his rare toys or whatnot.

GREG: Is there much interest in Giant Robot in Asia? Like when you approach folks that live and work in Shanghai, or Hong Kong, or Manila, or Tokyo, how do they respond to the magazine? I know Asia is hugely diverse in culture, so perhaps it’s a crude question, but what the hell, I’m going for it.

Martin: We have fans all over the place, but it’s kind of like here. Average schmoes—Asian or not—just don’t get it. They’re rather read about mainstream crap like what the Friends are up to or what Tom and Katy’s baby burped yesterday. Just like here, we get the arty folks, the punkers, and the geeks. Only fewer, because most don’t read English!

GREG: GIANT ROBOT is at least partially about living in California, isn’t it? It has a California vibe, to be sure, just like the old Thrasher I read as a hairless 7th grader in the early ‘80’s did. How much is your editorial voice is informed by being Californians?

Martin: Well, we are in L.A., and that’s one thing that informs us when it comes to art, music, food, and everything. We can surf in the morning, drive a couple hours, and snowboard at night. Then skateboard when we get home! When I was in college, it seemed like single band that matters comes through town, and now it’s the same way with artists and filmmakers. That helps us put together a mag that’s local, but not incestuous. And, damn, we have the best of every type of food. Not just Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Vietnames, Korean, Thai, Malaysian, Hawaiian, and any other Asian-Pacific cuisine but also Ethiopian, Cuban, and whatever else.

GREG: Your magazine does great travel pieces, covering stuff off the Lonely Planet path. Has there ever been any moments were either of you fellas, or one of your writer got into some deep shit when on the road? Rip-offs, cops, explosive diarrhea, vicious animals, one eyed pimps, etc.

Martin: The sad fact is that I hardly ever travel! If you read the travel pieces they’re usually friends who are on the road for work, play, or whatever. Eric gets out now and then, but the most exotic place I’ve gone lately is San Diego.

GREG: Any major plans (Sixty second Superbowl spots, Giant Robot Days at Magic Mountain, subscriber-only orgies, etc) for Issue Five-Oh?

Martin: Wow, that is coming up soon, isn’t it? I think we should have a Japanese New Year type thing where people line up to get slapped by Senator Inoki.
GREG: Name the three best dishes at GREats, Giant Robot’s restaurant out on Sawtelle Blvd, in West LA, home of The Cabbage Patch (the dance). You have eight seconds (honor system, since we’re on email).

Martin: Tofu Tacos (spicy) – Off the menu, but you can ask if Chef Nelson is there
Curry with Tofu Meatballs – Added to the menu by popular request (of me)
Whatever the special is – I don’t eat meat, but if I did I’d eat nothing but the fish specials. Chances are, Eric’s uncle caught something that was too big for the family to eat!

GREG: Finally, are you Punk Rock or New Wave?

Martin:Well, that’s not for me to judge, but I hope it’s punk rock. New wave styles come and go, but punk rock is for life.

##

You can check out Martin’s blog here.

Ruby, surly mermaid expert.

Today, Ruby and I had a frank discussion about the dire implications of my lack of belief in mermaids. The transcript follows.

G: Roo, do you think mermaids are real?

R: No...wait, I do think it. And they probably don't like you, Daddy because you don't believe. Mermaids DO NOT like people that don't believe in them. They take over those people. You don't want to be taked over do you?

G: Well, no...

R: You better start believing.

G: Okay. Where do they live?

R: At the beach and in bays. They wash up everywhere, not in our country, but in Pirate Lands. And if you want to find a mermaid, Daddy, you have to work harder.

G: What language do mermaids speak?

R: They speak American! What's wrong with you? I mean they speak English, Pirate language. They're half-human and half-fish. And you're ruining mermaid kind.

G: I am?

R: Yes. Because the legend says you ruin mermaid kind by not believing. You'll be begging for mercy! Start believing in mermaids and tell your friends, too. So when the mermaids take over, they'll thank you. Better do it, Daddy.

Owen, who just ran into the room, nude: Can I have a cookie?

Ruby: Me too!

You heard it here. Start believing in mermaids, and start believing soon. For the day is neigh that all knees shall bow before our mermaid overlords. Just saying.

Suzanne, art dealertrix

Today I spent the afternoon reading Am I Gay?. Between questions about whether giving hand relief to a tranny rates you as a gay, I rattled off some questions to my pal Suzanne, who runs The Beholder Gallery an online no-bullshit gallery, where normal people can buy original, reasonably-priced fine art without dealing with the weirdness of a gallery.

She's also great art director.

Here's the Q&A. I did not ask her if she thought I was gay.

G: You've got a gallery, yeah? You just up and did it. Why did you do it?

S: I've always felt that the art establishment was just a little too
haughty for what is essentially a business driven by money.
Maybe I've got a chip on my shoulder for becoming a graphic designer and never wanting to play the art game seriously. But that's another story.

The Beholder was started to give people a way to connect with artists outside of the usual way. The web lets people look at their own pace and decide for themselves what they like for whatever reason.

I've sold a number of pieces to people I know are just getting into
buying art. And when someone tells me its their first piece of "real" art I get all excited, because that's really my goal.

G:Have artists responded to the web gallery concept?

S:I just got a submission today from an artist who has taken a really
established path: Yale Grad School and a bunch of NY shows.

When folks like that come to me because they like what I'm doing, I know that I must be doing something right. Some are doing it for kind of an experiment and are not sure my idea is for them, and some really get it and are helping me with shows and promotions.

G:Does it bring them closer to the collector?

S:There hasn't been that much "customer bonding" but the buyers who I do get to know are curious about the artists and vice versa.

G: Next! What sort of background do you have? Any fancy pants art training?

S:I have been working in the art-for-commerce world for about 15 years and have really enjoyed it.I was nervous at first when I started the gallery that I don't have any formal experience selling fine art, but I think that turns out to be a bonus most of the time. Sometimes I ask dumb questions, but for the most part, people are pretty understanding.

G:How do you find the artists? Right now, my fav painter on your site is Bob Bechtol. Great stuff. Perfect for say, a birthday present. For me. (And of course, Robert Hardgrave is awesome. And Katja.)

S: At first it was begging my friends and now it's almost half
submissions, which is great. Everyone has a different perspective and is in
different points in their careers, which is the fun part.

Robert Hardgrave just opened a big show at BLK MRKT in LA which is a pretty big deal. Pretty soon he won't be needing me anymore (sob) but I'm stoked that I found him before they did.

G: Have you ever rented art to porno film productions?

S: Maybe the stuff behind glass...

G: I have a dead trout in an aquarium filled with aspic. Will you unload it for me? 50/50?

S: You could try calling Saatchi, I hear he's quite a nice bloke.

G: One more question: Were you aware there's monster in
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons called a beholder? It's pretty badass, too.

S: Sweet. Maybe I can contact them to do some "cross-promotion."

Hank, a nice man who owns a gun or two

When I first came up with this little project of interviewing interesting friends, the first name on the list, writ large in all caps, was HANK.

Hank is the step-father of one of my most important friends, Abe. He's smart, a little creepy and a genuinely sweet guy. He once emailed my wife to ask if she'd like to collaborate on poems about Hannibal Lechter. He was only joking a little, I think.

A few years ago, Hank and I spent the afternoon of Abe's wedding talking under a tree, because it was fucking hot. We talked a bit about guns, along with the nature of love and the weirdness of weddings. Better than than doing the Bunny Hop by a long shot, I'd say. I've kept that conversation in the back of my mind since then, and I thought I'd ask Hank to dredge up that conversation for the blog.

Hank is also a gun owner. I don't know many gun owners, and I'm not one myself, but I'm fine with other people owning them. Just don't point that thing at me.

So Hank and I chatted via email extensively about the gun thang, so extensively in fact that this is a truncated version. You can get the director's cut over at Some People I Know. It include a funny essay Hank wrote about the more swishy, shopping side of gun ownership. I say check it out.

G: Hank, at Abe’s wedding you and I had an interesting conversation about guns. In the past few years, you’ve taken up gun ownership as a hobby. I guess a lot of people have this preconceived idea of gun owners as these reactionary Berserkers, where as you’re a thoughtful, loving guy…right?

H: I don’t like to admit that I might be a loving person. There are too many counter-examples out there in too many minds to make any of those claims. Plus, it is Plus, it is way too limiting. I would rather have people think that I am not a loving person, and that way they can be pleasantly surprised, I hope.

One thing that propelled me into the "gun world", if you want to call it that, that I am very aware of is your typical jew-boy threatened by storm trooper scenario. I can make light of it, I do make light of it, but there is some fear there too. It's that old "4 A.M. and a gang of armed thugs smash their way into my house and drag me off to the camps" mental reverberation that I have had for as long as I can remember. When I took a look at that fantasy, I realized what was most terrifying was the sense of helplessness it gave me. I wanted to be in a position to say, "OK, you might get the best of me and mine, but I am at least gonna hurt you in the process." I can say that archaic fear of the Evil Invaders has softened considerably since my home has become an armed fortress (just kidding about the armed fortress part).

G: Well, I can relate to that, but it's really pretty much an abstract fear, isn't it? I mean in this day and age?

H: Yes, if you mean for most law-abiding citizens in the US or other parts of the post-industrial world. But in many places in the world, involving I would say a majority of the people who are alive today, it is a very real fear, a real possibility in their lives. I remember a few years ago on a Saturday afternoon there was a rumor in the town I live in that there was a gang of kids robbing stores in the malls north of here. A rumor, unsubstantiated by anyone in authority, but many of the shops in town closed because of it. As New Orleans demonstrated, any place may be only one natural disaster away from adventures with armed bad guys. I remember a quote from Orwell that I find speaks to this issue: "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men are prepared to do violence on their behalf." He was talking about wars between nations, but my feeling is now that everyone should be prepared to defend himself or herself.

That whole thing is the dark side of why I learned to shoot, and why I am a happy gun owner today. Of course there were other sides too.

When I turned fifty I made a list of things that I wanted to learn and study. Ball room dancing and French were on that list, but those interests died on the dance floor so to speak. Learning to shoot and learning computers are thriving.

G: Can you say something about how it actually happened in your life?

H: I am, as you note above, a thoughtful person, in that I like to think about things I am doing, learn a bit about them and let my motivation grow or not in the process. Someone gave me a copy of a book called Boston's Gun Bible which I found fascinating and in fact reviewed on Amazon. From there it was just a question of learning. To buy a gun in this country you usually have to have a federally licensed firearms dealer. I met a wonderful guy nearby here who is a real "there is no such thing as a dumb question" guy. A very decent and generous guy, who pointed me in the right direction. And I was lucky enough to find a master of the shooting arts, in fact quite locally at the Chabot Gun Club in Oakland. This man, John Maunder, is a life-long student of fire arms and shooting, and a real old-fashioned gentleman and honorable being. He has also been unbelievably kind to me and generous with his time. I have yet to meet anyone who shoots seriously who fits the stereotype you mentioned. I am constantly made happy by how kind and welcoming these folks are. John never lets any of his students forget that shooting is a potentially lethal pastime, so you have to be calm, cool, collected, humble and all those virtuous things or you are gonna be in deep dog-doo.

I am politically progressive, but I believe strongly that people should learn how to shoot, how to defend themselves. To me, the liberal knee-jerk reaction to guns is every bit as thoughtless as the right�s knee-jerk reaction to gay marriage. Thoughtless and very damaging. It is almost impossible where I live in California to get a permit to carry a concealed gun, but if it were possible, I would do it.

G: How did people you’re close to react to your nascent gun thingie?

H: My wife Thea has had a terrible time with it. She has a visceral reaction to guns that borders on terror. Sadly for her, her husband, her sons Abe and Alex, and her sister Colleen’s husband and son are all gun owners and enthusiastic shooters. I would say Mac (Greg: Hank's son) is probably squeamish on the subject, but he is somewhat at home with his dad’s weird interests.

My colleagues at work have turned out to be either current or former fire arms aficionados. That surprised me, but it no longer surprises me.

G: Meaning?

H: OK, here’s a story. A woman friend of mine who is a kind of archetypal Berkeley liberal invited me to have coffee with her cause she had something she had been thinking about and she wanted to ask me my opinion. Her question was: “What do you think about guns?” When I heard this my heart sank because I immediately thought we would get into one of those heated discussions that people on opposite sides of an issue tend to have. Turned out she had been doing a lot of thinking and reading on her own and had herself decided she needed to learn how to shoot! That really surprised me, but I think it is where people get to if they face the facts.

G: Did you grow up with guns? Did your father or any relatives hunt? When and how and why did your interest pique? What sort of instruction have you had?

H: Until I was nine I lived on top of a mountain in eastern Pennsylvania in a little town with about 12 families. Everybody hunted, except my Swiss dad, who preferred fly fishing! I have since reclaimed my Swiss heritage by learning to shoot, because Switzerland has no other army except for its armed citizens. That whole William Tell thing is not just some cute Disney cartoon to them, but a very serious founding myth.

I have taken a number of classes at different places, and I go to the range for practice. Like anything else, it requires total devotion to get really good at, and my total devotion is directed elsewhere, so I am at peace with that decision and glad that I have some minimal competence with fire arms.

G: Obviously, guns are a semiotician’s wet dream. When you first started handling and firing guns, did you ever get freaked out, like “Holy Fucking Shit! I AM
HOLDING A GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING GUN!”?

H: Yes, yes and more yes. It is ceaselessly drummed into me that you better realize that you have a lethal machine in your hands when you have a fire arm. You better be healthily scared too. My teachers go by the strict ethic that there are no accidental shootings. The person who shoots someone else “accidentally” is always responsible for it.

I have become more respectful of the warrior ethic. We are taught that such a thing no longer exists, that the trenches and machine guns of WW I killed it off. But as an ideal to strive for, embracing honor, integrity, courage, a spirit of service, it’s not bad. I have found these qualities are highly valued among my “gun totin’ friends”. It’s very much a reputation-based culture. It doesn’t seem to matter what your politics or religion is. If you demonstrate those values, you get respect. There are apparently an awful lot of overweight,. middle aged guys out there who see themselves as warriors, and try in some measure to live up to an ancient ideal.

Well Greg, I know you are dying to ask me some more, but I have to go now. Let’s meet real soon and flap our jaws some more, OK good buddy?

G: That’s an affirmative, my strange friend.

Fred, a hotrodder

Ich bin ein pachuco.

Friendly friend Fred is a hot rodder. He has raised a lowly ’64 Beetle unto the realm of SWEETASS thanks to impudent arc welding and liberal application of mid 30’s Ford parts and the disk brakes of a 914. His Stink Bug is apparently a Grand National Roadster Show class winner. I’m sure that’s something very nice.

Meanwhile, I drive a 98 Honda Accord automatic, also pretty sweet. Especially the carseats. NICE.

So I thought I’d interview Fred about his ride, but he was cagey. “Just ask me weird stuff otherwise it’ll be boring” he said. I’d like to apologize for the results now. The Q & A follows…

G: Fred, I’ve been wondering about movie stars. Like, smiling
all the time must get tedious. At what point does smiling just become a straight muscle memory thing rather than an emotional response? Does Tom Hanks enjoy smiling?


F: I'm glad you asked this intrepid question. That is why you are my hero. Life has it's way of balancing out our actions. For every action, there is an equal reaction.

Now, for every smile Tom gives, there is a grimace.

Example:

Tom - Yes, I loved the Da Vinci Code too...

Tom - No, I will not do a Bosom Buddies Reunion...

I also think, because smiling is such an emotional action, sincerity
plays a big role the amount of fatigue experienced in serial smilers.
Think endorphin release when you get to shake the hand of a lovely lady
versus the amount of energy needed to control the fight-or-flight
mechanism while entertaining a certain Dick Cheney.

G: You own a sock-it-to-me type modified Volkswagen. (My father-in-law HATES Volkswagens, by the by. He’s a Ford man.) Did hot rodders in the sixties juice up Volkswagens, or is this some recent stoner thing? Do you smoke pot? Did you dodge the draft, too, you commie rat?

F: Homely cat ? No, I haven't seen any lately.

But, you zay zomesing about zisss . . VOLKSWAGON. YA ! It iz der
PEOPLES KAR ! YES ? No ? Even TODAY... I drive a nice Zpecimin to Verk.

G: Fred, why do you think Japanese culture created Sumo? Do you think those guys are studly, or are they simply counting on being big blubbery mountains to get the gig done?

F: Your cultural metaphors secrete me. What your really asking me here is if I would like to go see a movie with you, right ?

G: Fred, I can’t really grow in sideburns. Do you think
this would have affected my social standing in Victorian times?

F: I have to look deep into my magic HISTORICAL-RETORICAL Orb Globe...
Going back.... Back... back...
Oh dear... Your social standing seems to have / will / did remain..
ahem... sordid.

G: Can a modern ballet danseur get away with a juicy jete
for the sake of the jete these days, or do you think that postmodernism has rendered technical skill pointless?

F: pointless POINTLESS ??
You - of all people - The very mention of a single wasted movement,
a betrayal of all I feel about YOUR virtuoso performance last night !!
YOU, in the darkened theater - bursting effortlessly into the light -
as if you where the Michael Jordan of the AILES DE PIGEON.

G: I want a car stereo. Any suggestions?


F: Just make sure you get speakers. This time.

G: What’s your URL?

F: You are so nasty.


(Photo purloined from the VW Trends website. That is Fred, and that is the Stink Bug.)

A-ha! The Tables Turned!

y blog pal Kimananda has dropped a load of questions on me. Granted, I asked her to, because I thought they'd be easy. Ha! Not the case. Apparently not everyone has adopted my half-ass and lazy interview style.

Anyway, my answers are below. Feel free to cringe.

1. You have been given the opportunity to become any person whom you've mentioned on any of your blogs. Who do you become and why?

Um, this is an odd question. Do I become wholly that person, thus unaware that I'm still me? Or do does my ego manifest as a sneaky little gnome guy, hiding out and monitoring the show? Do I get to carve "Motorhead" into the brain of the victim?

Um, I suppose Nabakov would be the most interesting personality to inhabit. He had an interesting life and from his writing I'd guess his innerlife was pretty phatasmagoric. Nice place to visit for 24 hours. Or Lemmy, 'cause of the chicks.

2. One of your listed interests is 'reading while eating'. What is
your favorite and your least favorite book/food combination, and why?

Chinese seems to work for most books, because the flavor isn’t so insistent that you can’t ignore when you have to. Really amazing food of course deserves full attention (though conversation is always given). A memorable meal/book combination was back in my financially strapped days: a friend of a friend did a favor for a guy who worked in a hoity-toity liquor store. In payment, the liquor employee gave my aquaitance a carton filled extremely expensive, extremely stolen French wine, a bottle of which somehow ended up in my dingly little house. I read “Pale Fire” and while eating a baked chicken breast stuffed with spinach and feta and this purloined amazing wine that tasted stolen. And it was raining. Nice.

Cereal is bad for most books, unless they’re kind of dumb and pointless.

Note: Books that stay open on their own are best for eating to.

2. You know many fun facts about many well-known people…tell us five fun facts about yourself. Be creative, yet honest.

a. I have a gimp wrist. My left hand can’t rotate to a palm-up position. The farthest it’ll go is with my thumb pointing up in a “nice to meet you” position. I could never be a really good waiter.

b. Won a pony when I was four in a drawing at the Walnut Festival. The beast was named Billy Blazer and his back was bowed. My parents were not horse or pony people and so were a bit put-out by the whole thing.

We kept the poor old bastard in the backyard for the month we owned him. He used to come stare at us at the picture window while we watched TV. Haunting.

c. Tried out for the American quiz show Jeopardy a couple years back. Aced the test, but freezed up on the screen-test portion. It was a weird experience that still seems dreamlike to me. I may have to blog about it.

d. My three-year old son is getting his tonsils out soon and the thought of him going under scares the living crap out of me.

e. I’m overweight and it vexes me to no end. I worked with a personal trainer for a while and had good results but gave it up because I found watching TV and eating ice cream like a barn yard hog a lot more fun. Am ramping up to take another crack at this “health” thing I hear so much about.

3. Bastard of Art, or Bastard of Commerce. You can only choose one. Which do you choose, and please justify your answer.

Easy, I think. I’d have to say “Art”. “Commerce” is just how keep shoes on the children’s feet and a chicken in the pot.

What I’d call my “Art” is the little worlds I detour into. Some of that gets routed onto my blog, very occaisionally some gets into my work. Other crap is probably too idiosyncratic to make sense to most people. My long suffering wife gets glimpses into it and she seems to get a kick out of seeing my mind work. I write, I draw, I tell idiotic little stories to friends. It’s the aspect of my personality I get the most satisfaction from and I’m most protective of.

I worry about losing that as I get older.

5. You've started interviewing real people. Who tops your dream list of interviewees, and what would be the main topic of conversation?

God. (That's an interjection, not the interveiwee.) Um, I'd have to say Sterling Hayden. He was the actor that played the insane Air Force general in Dr. Strangelove and the corrupt Irish cop that Michael Corlone kills over dinner in the Godfather. He was an instinctive actor that dominated any scene he was in, but genuinely hated the acting process. He liked sailing boats and he took his kids on a six month South
Seas cruise on his yacht without telling his ex-wife. Obviously not something I condone, but still...ballsy.

John. A filthy puppeteer.

My friend John hustles puppet. Hand puppets. Sock puppets.
The sort of puppets one associates with church youth groups and poignantly under-funded hunting safety awareness programs in small, rural school districts.

These are those sorts of puppets, only with syphilis and model airplane glue addictions. Vulgar, profane, angry puppets; puppets that lead innocents astray.

John is a founder of the Harvey Finklestein Institute, a think tank that develops original and nasty things for cheap puppets to do while adults watch. The Institute is currently running shows in its home base of Chicago, as well as recently opening “Sock Puppet Showgirls” in New York (yes, it’s an all sock puppet adaptation of Eszterhas’ masterwork).

Below, I ask John a bunch of questions about filthy puppets. It may be boring. I just don’t know. Join us, won’t you?

G: Congrats on the opening. And Harvery Finklestein is
now in...New York? Is that right? I'm confused.

J: Thanks. Harvey Finklestein is indeed in NYC, "Harvey Finklestein's
Sock Puppet Showgirls" running since May 13. In Chicago we just opened "UU7: A Magician Never Tells His Tricks", which has received an overall pan by the critical community! Ha!!! I guess people in mascot costumes tea-bagging other people in mascot costumes isn't for everybody!

G: Um, John, holy shit, you've built a career on the back of a filthy hand puppet! What is the genesis of the Harvey Finklestein
Institute?

J: Beer and a sock puppet version of Oedipus Rex, from there the flower bloomed. We then did a sock puppet version of the MGM film "Showgirls", told in 45 minutes

G: Has any audience members died in a gruesome or unsettling way during a performance?

J: Not that I know of. But once people showed up with home made t-shirts and pennants on sticks that they waved during the show.

G: From where does Harvey "make"?

J: His penis

G: Are there multiple Harveys?

J: No, there can be only one Harvey Finklestein. That's why he's kept in a plastic Ziplock freezer bag.

G: Does he get laundered much?

J: Never been washed, I guess that's why he's so filthy! Did I just say
that?

G: Has Harvey evolved over time?

J: Yeah… he started out as a "Damn-it!" Doll, then he turned into a
loud-foulmouthed-insulter, and finally to a dirty and perverted puppet who speaks with an english accent (which I believe gets worse as time goes on. A-heh.

G: Have you ever had any walk-outs or outrage from tight-sphinctered types?

J: Yes. Last friday 10 minutes in a couple walked out - no refunds. The first show (a-heh) a group of six left after a young lady was overheard to utter "I can't handle this! I've got to get out of here." No outrage as of yet.

G: Have any confused people ever brought their kids to see the lovely puppets?

J: People have asked if HFSPS was for kids. And this happened when we were playing at midnight.

G: You’ve got a new production, UU7: A Magician
Never Tells His Tricks , that just debuted in Chicago.
What the hell is it about?

J: It's a parody of the James Bond genre.

G: Now with uu7, you're incorporating life-sized puppets and a live band. At any point in conceiving the production did you find yourself thinking, "Wow. This has potential of being
really gay"?

J: No, but now I do.

G: Were any things taken out because of excessive gayness?

J: Yes. All the (a-heh) stuff about you.

G: Are there jugglers or cat trainers?

J: We're working on that.

G: So now you’re running a two-city empire. Do you
spend a lot of time in New York?

J: No. Once every couple of months maybe for two nights. Last October I commuted from Chicago to do the show on weekends for three weeks, which lost it's appeal during the second week, as I blew projectile vomit pizza chunks into the just opened La Guardia airport mens room at 6 am on a monday morning.

G: Do New Yorkers have a different response to the show?

J: Yes. they are willing to pay $15 at the box office.

G: As an impresario, do you get to wear a cape and monocle now?

J: How did you guess?

G: Do you interject (a-heh) randomly in conversation?

J: Yes, of course

G: Several years ago on our shared birthday, you and I
protested irrational traffic patterns on during the
morning commute. We stood on Pleasant Hill Road with
signs, shaking our fists at traffic. I think we made adifference. What about you?

J: I sleep better at night thinking we did, always have.
If that wasn't the right thing to do, then there's just something plain
ol' wrong in this America we live in.

Peter: Film maker, ice hockey-type person

Here's another installment in my thrilling attempt to force people I know to write my blog for me. Check out the rest of the profiles over at Some People I Know.

Holy shit! Peter made a goddamn movie! Now, we all have our little scrubber friends who make their little three-minute long, pathos-filled montage of winos and Autumn leaves. Well, those movies suck because they're boring and stupid, and the friends who made them are your flakiest, most douchebaggie friends, the kind you know will drift out of your life after a year or two.

This is not that sort of movie, and Peter, while a douchebag, is not flaky.

Because Peter made a goddamn MOVIE that PLAYED IN THEATERS on SCREENS that HAS JOKES and it even has a star in it, albeit one that you might not of heard of (Jim Gaffigan!).

The film is called "No Sleep 'Til Madison". It's about some thirty something guys, roadtripping across Wisconsin during the state high school ice hockey playoffs.

Of course it's actually about death and homosexual longing, as are all films. You can check out the official site here.

So come join me as I ask Peter about his film, his love of Fon du Lac and his son's thing for the Wicked Witch.

G: When did you write the screenplay?

P: I wrote the script with Erik Moe, another Wisconsin refugee, back in the summer of 1999. Erik had a TV development deal at the time with Universal Studios in LA. We'd spend all week on the phone exchanging notes, then I'd fly down from San Francisco on weekends, where we'd hole up in his studio lot office and write like the wind. It was a fun, amazingly productive process. We'd take turns at the keyboard while the other person paced and acted out lines. We were surprisingly dedicated to the task, and a first draft of the script was written very quickly.

G: Was it based on anyone you know or heard about? Do people really give a shit about Wisconsin High School hockey?

P: The script was inspired by our mutual obsession with Wisconsin High School Hockey, an obsession that has proven difficult to explain to the uninitiated. We've had people tell us it's just an exaggerated form of homesickness. Others have explained it as a longing for a highly romanticized, less follicularly-challenged version of ourselves. I think it's the uniforms. Whatever the reasons, Erik and I are devoted to high school hockey, sometimes to the chagrin of the coworkers we harangue into participating in our annual February Madness High School Hockey Pool. So one night I called Erik with a brilliant idea: Why not fly back to Wisconsin and follow the state tourney for a week? Take in games in exotic locales like Eagle River and Fon du Lac? He too thought the idea inspired; our wives did not. So I came up with Plan B: Let's take a long a video camera and make a documentary about the journey. Erik went one better: Let's make a movie. And that's when we started mapping out a story.

G: How did you get Jim Gaffigan?

P: Erik had worked with Jim on some hilarious but never-aired TV spots, where Jim played a guy so obsessed with the Energizer bunny that his whole life revolved around preparing for the day when the Bunny finally ran out of gas. Spots showed Jim taking drum lessons, sewing his own bunny suit, etc. Swap high school hockey for the Energizer bunny and you had Owen Fenby, the hero of our movie. So Erik sent Jim the script, and he was very enthusiastic about giving it a go. The glasses Owen wears in the movie are the same glasses Jim wore in high school.

G: If Tom Hanks is "A" list, what letter would you assign Gaffigan? Like a "C"?

P: At the time Jim was an extremely successful commercial actor with a burgeoning stand up career and a development deal with David Letterman's Worldwide Pants. Not a household name, but definitely in the "where have I seen that guy before?" category. Since then his stand up career has really taken off, and he’s getting a lot of acting work, too. His Comedy Central special airs all the time, and his DVDs and CDs are top sellers. He’s friggin’ hilarious, by the way, and a real pleasure to work with.

G: Which film festivals has N.S.T.M appeared in?

P: No Sleep appeared in 17 festivals, but none of the “famous” ones. The festival circuit was yet another bizarre chapter in No Sleep’s history. In one city we'd have people lined up around the block to see the movie; another was held in a dinner theatre where we drank ourselves senseless while the only other people in the audience, an elderly couple from Marco Island, Florida, shouted nacho orders to a waitress.

G: Did you finance it with credit cards?

P: The credit card approach to filmmaking is never a good idea. Your chances of ever seeing a return on the money invested in a truly independent film are so remote, that it’s just plain stupid to put your financial future in jeopardy just so you can stave off getting a real job for another six months. My advice: If you can't get the financing without credit cards, write a book instead. Or shoot on video (an option that was not readily available when we started production). We tried to be fairly responsible about the money situation. We sold shares in a limited partnership. Luckily, the Blair Witch Project had just come out, which made it easier for to raise funds. We were able to meet our production goal fairly quickly, thanks to a lot of incredibly generous friends and family members (none of whom talk to us anymore).

G: What indie films did you get inspiration from?

P: A few weeks before shooting, Erik and I flew back to Wisconsin to start scouting locations. It was February in Wisconsin, and we were just starting to realize how in over our heads we were, when we saw Chris Smith's American Movie at the Point 6 Cinema. For 107 glorious minutes, we completely forgot about our own problems and instead laughed at Mark Borchardt’s attempts to make his own low budget film. Talk about your inspiration. It’s a fantastic documentary. And made in Wisconsin, no less.

G: What other sort of writing have you done? More screenplays?

P: Prior to No Sleep, I had done some other screenwriting on two other indie films: the voiceover narration for a film called Road Kill with Jennifer Rubin, and a co-writing credit on This Space Between Us with Jeremy Sisto and Poppy Montgomery. Erik has written a bunch of TV pilots and had several screenplays optioned. We recently collaborated on another screenplay, set in the dot com glory days of the late 90s, but after some initial interest, it’s currently in the dead letter office.

In terms of other writing, Erik has written a cult favorite “cartoon” book called Tales of a Young Urban Failure (Note from Greg:a funny, though sadly out of print, book), while I've had some success in the fiction genre with a few short stories. Lately I've been trying out some memoir-type pieces in the David Sedaris meets Frederick Exley vein, and I have this idea of writing a book-length memoir of the making of No Sleep, which I think could be a movie in itself. I understand it's a total cliché: the copywriter aspiring to be "real" writer thang, but it keeps me from growing annoyingly bitter.

G: You ever play D&D?

P: I have never played D&D, though I will admit to some intense sessions of knee hockey played in the basement of Ivo Knezevic's childhood home. Not too nerdy, unless you consider the participants were all in their early thirties, a few made posters promoting their imaginary teams, and one of them cried when he lost in overtime.

G: I really, really want to include the bit about your son getting a boner watching Sleeping Beauty

P: First of all, it's not Sleeping Beauty; it's Wizard of Oz. Second, it's not Dorothy who causes the erection; it's the Wicked Witch of the West. Third, there's nothing strange about a four-year-old getting a boner every time he sees the witch; it's a testament to the power of film, and of man's innate desire to chase the "bad girl."

Hugh: illustrator, anarchist, cider drinker, bike rider

Here's the second chat with an interesting friend. From here on out I'll be posting these interview simultaneously at a new blog
Some People I Know. I have a couple of folks lined up, and if you know something interesting and you'd like to contribute let me know.

In this entry friend Hugh offers up a mea culpa of sorts for the WORST THING HE'S EVER DONE.

I've know Hugh for 14 years or so. He was the art director of the US office of Lonely Planet Publications, a travel guide publisher I worked poorly at in the early '90s.

(Really, I was a fucking liability at my job.)

Hugh has since tranformed into OMAC, a One Man Army Corps of activism, illustration and dressing like an old man. Not one to sit by and shake his fist at the TV (he doesn't own one), Hugh consistently goes out and DOES STUFF to change things that are rotten and for that I'm proud that I know him. A singular chappie. You can see some samples of his boombastic illustrations over at Hugh Illustration.

Here's THE WORST THING HUGH HAS EVER DONE.

Hugh:

You wanted to know the worst thing I ever did, so here it is:

In the Year of Our Lord '91, I was finishing up my last semester of art school. There was this guy I knew, a pretty good painter, we'll call him "Greg". For some reason, I was a complete and total shit to Greg that year, and I've been carrying around the guilty weight ever since.

I guess Greg got on my nerves a bit, although we were friends and were part of the same scene. His only crime, if I remember correctly, was speaking confidently and enthusiastically about his own work, to whomever would listen. I think my own self esteem was so low at that point that I just couldn't stand to hear anyone else toot their own horn.

As our senior art show approached, Greg was increasingly MIA. When he did show up, he would have some hot girl on his arm (Greg got a lot of attention from the ladies, another fact that probably drove me mad with envy), and he would do more talking than painting.

Did I mention that at this time I was recovering from an accident and was suffering from chronic back pain and insomnia? I was taking pretty heavy doses of Vicodin. So, hopefully that background sets the stage for my unforgivable behavior. I was jealous of Greg's confidence, resented what I viewed as his lack of commitment, and I was emotionally unstable thanks to my accident.

What happened was that I destroyed Greg's art. I feel terrible about it. I don't know what came over me, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I actually thought it was funny, only I was the only one that was laughing.

See, we were supposed to clean our art out of the common spaces in preparation for the senior show. Signs had announced for weeks that any art left behind would be destroyed. Greg, of course, never picked up his art, and when it came time to paint the walls of the studio, I happily ran a roller full of white paint right over three or four nice paintings. Real nice paintings that must have taken a lot of time to create. I remember one self portrait that got it pretty bad.

Once I saw how horrified other people were by my actions, I began to feel embarrassed, then guilty. Then afraid. Greg was actually a pretty big guy, and about 10 years older than me. And he drove a motorcycle. Suddenly, I really regretted ruining his paintings.

When he confronted me, he didn't start a fight with me (a lucky thing, since I was on crutches at the time). But he did raise his voice, and the worst part was that he told me in no uncertain words how much I had hurt him. "I can't believe I actually thought we were friends", he said. "But now I know that you never liked me."

***

Last month, my neighbors were having a party in the backyard. I opened my back door to join them, and who was standing right there in my backyard but Greg himself. I froze. I remembered his last words to me, all of 15 years ago, and I really didn't know what to do.

But I mustered the courage to go talk to Greg, and we had a really nice talk. I tried to apologize for my crime, and he tried to act gracious about the whole thing. Greg is now a successful painter. He has a gallery and has done hundreds of large scale, really awesome paintings. It was great to re-connect with him, but nothing can really take away the stain of what I did. I guess I just have to live with it.

H.

Me hanging with Robert: An Interview with a painter

A while ago I had the opportunity to interveiw the painter Robert Hardgrave for my friend Suzanne's art blogazine/online gallery Beholder (Suzanne's mission is to cut through the art world bullshit and bring artists and collectors closer together. Some beautiful stuff there. Check it out.) Robert Hardgrave is a Seattle based artist who paints some very dark, cartoonish (not in a bad way) paintings, kind of in the Giant Robot aesthetic. You can see Robert's work here.

I might be doing more of this sort of thing soon -- interveiwing interesting and/or weird people I know.

Anyhoo, let the Q-and-A begin. I give you, Robert Hardgrave.

Friend-of-Beholder Greg Mills recently caught artist Robert Hardgrave coming off the high of a 24 hour painting marathon. The two had an email conversation about death metal, all night painting orgies and using disease as a muse.

GREG: This 24 hour paint-o-thon sounds interesting. What was it, and did you gradually go insane over the length of the event? Was absinthe served?

ROBERT: The 24hr marathon was a blast. 18 artists from a wide variety of styles participated. We were placed in a building and encouraged to produce as much work as we could in a 24hr period. Under the agreement we were only really required to make 4 pictures. The energy in that building was incredible. Everyone worked so hard and it was very inspiring. In the end I made 8 completed pieces, but have 4 pieces which are almost done which I can now work on at my leisure. They were serving drinks for a while, but I chose not to drink to keep my energy up.

G: Hmmm, probably a good thing. Looking at your work, there's a heavy graphic feel to it, very illustrative. It reminds me of Aubrey Beardsley's Yellow Book illustrations, or some of Jim Woodring's more decadent stuff.

R: I have studied both of their work. Especially Jim Woodring. I corresponded with him a couple of times 10 years ago.He sent me these handwritten letters with little drawings in them. I love how black ink really makes colors pop. Clean lines and high contrast are my vice. I suppose I have a propensity for work with a more graphic feel, and prefer handmade qualities.

G:Other than "art school", can you trace your aesthetic back to any early inspirations... pop culture, high art, or whatever?

R:I never went to art school. I did get a "graphic design" degree in 2000, but the illustration part of the program was completely glossed over. Drawing has for a long time been a great source of comfort. As a kid I was given a Walter Lantz animation lesson book that inspired me quite a bit. I still have that book. The line work in that book was spectacular. Other than that book, art and I were never formally introduced, until I was in my early 20's. I moved to Seattle in 1992 which is when I started to truly explore art. I then absorbed as much as I could, from Peter Bagge's Hate comics, to Byzantine icons, to Dan Seagrave's death metal album covers. I am still a bit insatiable.

G:About Death Metal... on your site bio, you mention you're a death metal aficionado, which is rad. Do you listen to death metal while painting?

R:Indeed. Complex rhythms, riffs, and incessant beats are great for the work flow. I'm probably pretty funny to watch work. I really get into the music while I work.

G:Yeah, I guess Matthew Barney is Death Metal fan, too. I'm not sure how down with it Bjork is. My favorite Metal album cover is Judas Priest's "Screaming For Vengeance", the one with the giant mechanical raptor.

R:That is a great album and that cover is killer.

G: I like how the animals-of-prey-as-mechanical-dealers-of-violent-death theme you might see on a Dio album gets turned on its head to make it somehow cheery, almost Yellow Submariney. But I digress. Next question: your subjects are flat out grotesque. You freely borrow features from a variety of species, move eyes to cheeks, noses to forehead, it's very surreal, very H.P. Lovecraft. It's especially true when the painting is on wood... it starts to feel much more like an artifact of something someone glimpsed, rather than a fiction. Do you think sense of horror ever comes into play in your work? Do you even creep yourself out?

R:Maybe make myself laugh. Mixing things up is enjoyable. Everyone seems to be mixed up anyhow. I just try to make interesting drawings. Most of the work symbolizes experiences, people, or something else personal. It's kind of how I filter life. Which ones do you find horrific?

G:The Cancerland Series creeps me out. I'm guessing it's because this series is your reaction to surviving cancer. Knowing that wmakes it emotional immediate. How much does your experiences with disease inform your work?

R:The Cancerland series were all made during chemotherapy sessions. The last few sessions were at home and the drugs were pumped in over a 4 day period. A backpack, which housed the drugs, ran for four days. There were tubes running from the battery operated pumps to my portocath, a device placed in my chest. All of those drawings are honest depictions of how I felt. It was those drawings that helped me connect to a part of my brain that I don't feel I had tapped into prior. Since then, my work has become more expressive, mostly because of what I learned while being sick. I appreciate life a great deal more, and am doing exactly what I want to be doing, which is making drawings and paintings. Medication and scar references still seep into my work, but I try to pull from current experiences to make work about.

G:You're work is just detailed enough to be lush, without getting claustrophobic. How do you know when to stop?

R:Experience I guess. I limit my palette to just a few colors and I use a lot of repetition with slight differences to keep it interesting.

G:Who are the figures in your paintings?

R:If I told you that, they wouldn't be mysterious any longer. I can tell you that not all of the figures represent people. Does that help?

G: Are they evil?

R:Evil characters are always more interesting don't you think?

G: Are you capturing a moment?

R:Not really a moment, but more how I feel about a situation.

G:Do you have an internal narrative as you're painting?

R: No, but I like to make pictures that feel like there might be a narrative.

G: Thanks Robert. That was very interesting.

R: My pleasure. Thank you

CANADA: PERFIDIOUS DOMINION

Shattering Rose Colored Glasses, a blog acquaintance, has shanghai'ed me into participating in some unspeakable blogging ritual that my tender pink ears had to this moment been unsullied by it's mention. Alas, her home is Canada, a thin ribbon of settlement set against vast unknown wilderness full of oozing things and beavers, home to many strange and vile customs.

I guess I have to talk about books or something.

Number of Books that I own:
Books move in and out of the house semi-regularly. I guess there are about 500 or so books in various state of accesiability. There are a few dozen in the garage lost to mold. The kids have a bundle scattered throughout.

Last Book I Bought:
We the Mediaby Dan Gillmor.

It's a very comprehensive look at how blogs, RSS, SMS and cheap digital media tools are (hopefully) decentralizing and democratizing media. Really good. All three of you reading this should pick it up.

Last book(s) I read:
What's Welsh for Zen by John Cale.

Cale delivered the feedback and drone part of the Velvet Underground equation. It's an interesting story: he was a straight up avant garde musician with only a tangential interest in Rock and Roll. He just wanted to rock the viola with LaMonte Young (who apparently dealt a lot of pot). Very maturely written. Talks about his feuds with Lou Reed and Eno among others. He was married to Betsy Johnson, the clothes lady. Neat!

A Stroll With William James by Jacques Barzun.

Henry's brother coined two useful phrases: the stream of consciousness and my favorite, the Bitch Goddess Success. He's also the father of modern psychology and neurology and general a bad ass. Barzun wrote a gushy sweetheart letter that is also a very engaging caspule of James' work. I'm taking my time with this one. The concepts are thorny but man alive, is it worth it. I suspect I'll read again.

Five Books that mean a lot to me:
Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper.

Popper's whole deal is that an open society, one that allows for a mulitude of voices and ideology, serves it's citizen best. Tolerance and transperancy is ultimately more just and workable than strident social engineering, however well intended it is.

Master and Margaritaby Bulgakov and Pale Fire by Nabokov. Two novels that I can still point to a yell "goddamn". Both set my teeth on edge. Master & Margarita, besides inspiring Sympathy for the Devil, busts just about everyone. The Devil, Christ, Stalin, artists, bureaucrats. No one gets let off the hook. Pale Fire makes you sick from the perfection of it. Some folks think it's a cold book. But I don't see it. The character of John Shade'll break your heart.

Real Frank Zappa Book by Zappa hisself.

Zappa managed to become ZAPPA through sheer force of will. His music was difficult mixed with stupid. He was an anti- and hyperHippie, his influences include Stravinsky, Varese, Guitar Watson and Doo-Wop. He made being an outsider weirdo work and he did on his own terms. Well alright. It's a very funny book.

And a magazine MAD. Did wonders in elementary school. It really is all bullshit.