52 Pickup
New podcast w/Sara Lippmann, lots of links, some art, & more
Intro
My future wife & I had our second date at the Hi Life Bar & Grill on the Upper West Side. It was a Sunday, and we watched an NFL playoff game while we had lunch & boozed it up a little. (It was Colts-Chiefs, and I said I didn't have a horse in this race, and she said, “But he's Archie's son!”, as in Peyton Manning, and I guess I knew then we'd be A Thing, although it took another 6 weeks or so before we got to dating for real, and years later we'd both quit watching football because of the concussions, bodily damage, league hypocrisy, and the desire to regain hours on Sundays.)
After we finished, she asked if I was heading back to NJ, and I said, “Actually, an old friend of mine is throwing a small dinner party this evening, so I'm headed over there.”
She asked what the occasion was, and I said, “It's our birthday today, a year apart.”
“. . . It's your birthday? Today? And you . . . didn't say anything? . . .”
I told her I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, and that I try to never make a big deal out of it. I didn't go into why, and I guess I won't here, either.
Anyway, today’s my birthday. Here's a picture of the Hi Life taken last Saturday, along with my squinting mug, on my walk back from recording this week's podcast.
And now, on with The Virtual Memories Show!
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 521 of The Virtual Memories Show, featuring the return of Sara Lippmann. We talk about her debut novel, LECH (Tortoise Books), and how. We talk about how she had to move out of her comfort zone of short fiction (see her collections Doll Palace and Jerks) to write a novel, the research that went into writing about the Catskills in decline, and what it means to find the right container for a story. We get into the LECH’s title, and how it plays off of both the Biblical notion of Lech Lecha (“go forth”) and the tradition of novels named after their protagonists’ last names (Herzog, Stern, Jernigan), and how she looks at those books through a feminist lens. On top of that, we discuss the silliness of “literary immortality” and what it means that almost no one reads Saul Bellow anymore, my absolutely ingenious idea for changing the nature of my podcast, how Sara took up running at 40 to combat depression, the moment she learned to stop caring about external validation, and the new novel she’s working on. Oh, and I stupidly ask her for a writing prompt. Give it a listen! And go read LECH! (& go check out our 2014 conversation)
Last week, I posted Episode 520, the second annual “Gil gets interviewed” episode, with my pal Aaron Finkelstein returning to check in on the changes a year has wrought. We get into how a Yom Kippur fast sent me on some strange paths this fall, how our cultural touchstones mark us, what it means to be fair to our college-aged selves, and the identity of the one Watchmen character I never identified with. We also work through some of my personal failings and my ego-vanity complex, the analog/digital tightrope, whether bookishness is something we need to get over, and a LOT more, so go listen! (And go check out the first one we recorded, at the end of 2021.)
Links & Such
RIP Russell Banks . . . RIP Charles Simic . . . RIP Blake Hounshell . . .
Boy, OMNI had some weird-ass covers.
Man, libraries are coming up with some creative strategies to serve their communities.
Big Tech disrupts . . . bowling?
Check out the big brain on Brad!
Apparently, there are hard times ahead for "the podcast industry". Lucky for me, I make The Virtual Memories Show for love, not money. (That said, feel free to subscribe to this; I’ll get around to paywalled content soonish.)
The big ol' Barnes & Noble near(ish) me in Paramus, NJ is closing after 28 years. It's a bummer, because that one had a fun used books section where I bought a lot of stuff over the years, including the rare edition of Gary Panter's JIMBO (cardboard binding).
Here's the daily list of every movie, TV show, book, play and short story that Steven Soderbergh watched or read last year. I'd keep one but it would just read “BARNEY MILLER, THE BOB NEWHART SHOW, M*A*S*H” every day
Two years ago last week, I recorded a national TV interview with the TODAY Show that never aired (based on this WSJ article), because we wrapped 30 min. before the Jan. 6 insurrection. I organized the bookshelf to the left of me solely so I could win the whole Rate My Room thing that week, so it was disappointing to be pre-empted. I contend that my specially arranged bookshelves (below) were more fun than Xi Jingping's.
I mail out a postcard every (mail-)day this year. If you’re interested in being on the
victimrecipient list for that, just drop me a line with your mailing address.
Current reading
Septology, book II - by Jon Fosse
The Diaries of Franz Kafka - translated by Ross Benjamin (listen to our 2016 talk)
Boundless As The Sky - by Dawn Raffel (listen to our 2019 talk)
Art
I didn’t make anything worth sharing this past week. It’s been tough for me to get motivated & focused to draw, and the longer I go the worse the inertia/anxiety gets. I’m hoping that I’ll let it go today and just pick up a pen and get started. You should go to the Flickr album of all the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
My post-COVID lungs aren’t good enough for jogging yet, but I did get back to my workout routine. I was going to start with weights on Friday after work, but I worked WAY too long writing, rehearsing, recording, editing, processing, etc. a video presentation for a big investor/finance healthcare conference in San Francisco. (Pre-recorded because I wasn’t going to attend in person.) So I missed that, got in a yoga workout Saturday and weights on Sunday, but didn’t get to do yoga on Monday because I had to virtually attend that conference & it went WAY long. (Here’s my video.) So, in a fit of madness, I decided to get in a 2-a-day on Tuesday: yoga workout at 5:30 a.m. and weights at 5:00 p.m. I can only justify it because a) I woke up at 3:30 a.m. and had time on my hands, and b) I turn 52 today so who knows how much longer I can actually do something like that?
On the plus side, It’s Working! I’ve taken an Accountability pic (frontal, shirtless) every Sunday since last March when I started working out; I tag that with my weight so I can get a general idea of progress (and laugh at what my hair looks like each week). Thing is, I had no idea how my back looked from all this exercise, so after Sunday’s workout I used the webcam on my desktop computer to take a picture of my back-shoulders-arms, and it turns out I’m . . . getting kinda ripped? Click If You Dare, because I’m not embedding a picture like that in a family email/newsletter like this one. It sure is nice to see progress, esp. when I can look back at that first shapeless pic from March 2022.
Until Next Week
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back next with a new podcast, fun links, some art (I promise!), & maybe a little profundity or something.
Just another day,
—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
Mastodon • Instagram • Flickr • YouTube • Twitter • Linktr.ee