RoseLee Goldberg is an art historian, curator, and author of Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. In 2004, she founded PERFORMA, a non-profit arts organization that hosts a biennial series of performance art pieces in New York City. PERFORMA 09 (running through Nov. 22) marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of F.T. Marinetti’s “Futurist Manifesto,” credited as launching the Futurist movement.

TMN: What’s the relation between Futurism and performance art?

RoseLee Goldberg: The Futurists insisted that artists engage directly with the world around them. Their manifestos examined every aspect of artistic, social, and cultural life—painting, sculpture, film, theater, noise, dance, food, fashion, poetry, graphic design, and architecture—and they believed in confronting audiences directly with their exciting ideas—in the streets, on the airwaves, in theaters, in restaurants.

TMN: How involved are you in the curating of PERFORMA 09?

RG: Totally involved.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your office?

RG: I have this image of a tea towel design that I love taped on the wall above my desk.

TMN: What has been your favorite part of this year’s biennial so far?

RG: The fun of the chase and the amazing variety of ideas and sensibilities that emerge at the end of each evening. I am also very excited about the PERFORMA Hub! It is my dream come true. It is our headquarters—a flexible space that adapts to very different kinds of needs—performance space, seminars, video screening, gallery, workshop, event place, hangout. I begin every day there and drop in and out all day.

TMN: With 110 events in three weeks, how do you choose which to attend?

RG: I try very hard to get to everything. I have one of my students drive me from place to place, which makes it possible. He also gets an ongoing seminar on the history of performance along the way. —Erik Bryan, Nov. 19, 2009

Abhay Khosla is a regular contributor to The Savage Critics, a review of comic books. He’s made a foray into writing comics, and his absurdist, scatalogical adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula has garnered internet notoriety. Khosla also self-publishes Twist Street, an anthology of comics and other writing.

TMN: What inspired you to adapt Dracula?

Abhay Khosla: I don’t know where any of the Dracula stuff specifically came from. I don’t really remember. That was never the point for me. My motivation was that I wanted to experiment with clip-art solutions. Between South Park and Adult Swim, there’s no shortage of evidence that combining limited animation and absurdist comedy can yield interesting results.

I wish I had a funny answer for this. Basically, I’m kind of a nerdy Poindexter when it comes to things like web comics and clip-art solutions and the transition of comics from print to online media.



TMN: Why are vampire stories always so popular?

AK: I don’t know, really. Bram Stoker’s vampire is very different from the modern spin, I think. One might imagine Bram Stoker’s Dracula spoke to Victorian women’s repressed and unspoken sexual desires. “Dracula’s a dude what’ll have sex with you, ladies.” It’s kind of a gross rape fantasy, really. Is that true of modern vampires? The modern vampire is basically an abstinent heterosexual pretty-boy. It’s Angel who won’t have sex because he’s afraid of “losing his soul,” or that Twilight guy who won’t because he’s Mormon, or whatever. Dracula’s gone from “dude what’ll turn you out” to “dude that’ll hold your purse.”

But I see it other places, too. I tend to prefer to read blogs written by women, Tumblr-style blogs, especially. Tumblr seems to be predominantly women in their 20s and early 30s living either in Williamsburg or Silver Lake, who listen to, like, the Arctic Monkeys. And I’ve been reading these ladies complain about men they’re dating, and the complaints are so depressing in how little they’re asking for. “I wish a man would buy movie tickets ahead of time for our dates. I wish a man would make reservations for dinner. I wish a man would have a job, for which he earns a salary.” I saw one the other day, the gist of the story was, “I was on a date with a boy, and he interrupted our date to pee on a tree, right in front of me.”

I mean, in the 1950s, they had something called the battle of the sexes, and they made movies about it, and the movies were delightful. Has it really devolved to “I wish a man would not pee in front of me”? Worst Frank Tashlin movie ever.

So, yeah, my short answer is that vampires are popular because guys who live in Williamsburg and Silver Lake can’t satisfy women sexually.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your office?

AK: I inherited a print of dogs playing poker with my office, C.M. Coolidge’s “A Friend in Need.” Besides a Johnny Bench bobble-head, it’s the only decoration I keep in my office. I don’t have the best nesting impulse. But I look at it every day.

(1) The dogs have beers, whiskey, pipes, and cigars. I like that the dogs aren’t just playing poker, they’re getting hammered. (2) Two of the seven dogs are cheating—the two smallest dogs at the table, I might add. (3) The dogs who are cheating are making a lot more money than the dogs who are playing an honest game of poker. And (4) doggies!

Plus, C.M. Coolidge was the inventor not only of the dogs playing poker genre, but also the inventor of those big drawings of cartoon characters at parks, where tourists put their head through hole in the face and people take photos of them. Do you know what I’m talking about? They’re called “Comic Foregrounds.” I always just called them “those hole things.”

TMN: Comics readers are known for brand loyalty. How much of an effect will the recent Disney buyout of Marvel have on readers?

AK: I don’t think I agree with the premise of this question. The Marvel “brand” is seeing a change of ownership, but the brand itself isn’t going away, to my present understanding. There will still be a Marvel Comics after Disney has completed its purchase. McDonalds owns Chipotle. Coke owns Sprite. So mostly, I don’t care. Marvel has a culture, and a company’s culture doesn’t change overnight—people have to be fired. Then, their loyalists have to be fired, and their loyalist’s loyalists. Marvel was in a very different position at the end of the ‘90s than they are now, a historic low-point—all bad news. Then, the right people started getting fired.

Marvel’s competitor DC just fired a guy, though? But just one. So far.

Really, more than brand loyalty, though, comic readers are more known for their amazing lovemaking skills. Why can’t we get that rumor circulating for a change? I heard that the effect of the recent Disney buyout of Marvel is that comic readers will just have to spend more time giving your girlfriend multiple orgasms while you’re not around; pass it on.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at, but wish you were?

AK: Well, you know how Matthew McConaughey named his production company j.k. livin productions, based upon his dialogue from Dazed and Confused? “Let me tell you this, the older you do get the more rules they’re gonna try to get you to follow. You just gotta keep livin’ man, L-I-V-I-N.”

So, yeah, I kind of wish I was better at whatever the hell is going on with Matthew McConaughey. I wish I could just keep livin’, l-i-v-i-n. And sadly, I mean that much more sincerely than you expect. This may be the most sincere answer I’ve given in this interview. —Erik Bryan, Nov. 5, 2009

Brooklyn resident Emily Bobrow is editor of More Intelligent Life, the online version of The Economist’s quarterly culture and style magazine. She is also a contributor to The Economist’s books and arts section and has written for The Believer, the New York Observer, and TimeOut New York.

TMN: Any cultural conflicts in working for Brits from the U.S.?

Emily Bobrow: It is all too easy to underestimate the differences between Britain and America. We seem so similar, what with the language. The London offices are a hive of editors and writers who chat, debate, drink, and judge. Everyone’s sleeves are rolled up for the work of putting out a magazine. In our slightly lonesome New York bureau we enjoy the privileges of distance, but the magazine reaches us like a disembodied head. We don’t know the tussles. We don’t smell the sweat.

London can occasionally seem like an incestuous place. Everyone is incredibly polite, but there is a minefield of unspoken rules. I’ve grown familiar with such tricks as the shaming rhetorical question (“Well, that wouldn’t make much sense, would it now?”) and the offhandedly tossed gauntlet (“I suppose I just don’t see the point in that.”). It keeps you on your toes. I’ve also noticed that the English work hard but pretend not to, while Americans often strain to look busy yet accomplish little.

TMN: What’s it like to edit the online version of a magazine as opposed to the print product, in terms of behind-the-scenes?

EB: The cycle of editing a print product is distinct: slow beginnings, procrastination-friendly middles, bursts of pre-deadline activity, followed by a satisfying catharsis. Wash, rinse, repeat. Online, things are a bit different. The grind is daily and less rigid. We have a new story up on the site every day and an active blog; writers submit their work, which I then turn around, add graphics, and publish on the site (with help from an assistant editor and a contributing editor in New York). The effect is more like a churn—there are always more pieces than time. Catharsis is elusive.

I recently edited The Economist’s Books and Arts section for a couple of weeks, and I was surprised by how different it felt. The experience was much more collaborative, less isolated. Publication plans are announced at a big meeting; editing is compressed into a couple of days (with notes and feedback from the editor-in-chief); pages are created with help from people in graphics and art direction; stories are cut for space; and then—bam!—a physical product is born into the world. After years of online editing, the work of making pages was disconcertingly satisfying. What a pity no one wants to pay for print anymore.

TMN: Is the condition of print media as dire as everyone says?

EB: Of course it is. When was the last time you bought a newspaper? What was the last magazine subscription you shelled out for? We know information is valuable, and some of the hardest to acquire (war coverage, investigative studies) is also the most expensive to pay for. We learned in the last year that print advertising is too vulnerable to comfortably cover such costs. What we haven’t learned yet is just how publishers plan to pay for print journalism going forward, now that we all feel entitled to have our news instantaneously and for free.

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office?

EB: I have a mini-menagerie of animal toys on my computer. Beneath the toasty, Norman Rockwellian glow of my screen, several bees and a hamster look at me with plaintive eyes. “Are you getting enough sleep?” they sweetly ask. Also: “Do you really need that beer?” and “Really, another vitamin? How many B-complex tablets does it take to become a bionic nerd?” Like children, these creatures are not always pure of heart.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

EB: I hate keeping writers waiting for edits or thoughtful responses. I get bombarded by submissions, and it’s a challenge for me to handle everything in a satisfying way. Whenever I’ve been on the other end of this equation—as the writer who has lost sleep and is fragrant with anxious sweat over something I’ve filed—I have always interpreted an editor’s silence as a verdict. “My editor thinks I’m dumb,” I might have thought. Or, “I hate my editor because she thinks I’m dumb and won’t come out and say it.” But now I know the truth: editors are often very, very busy people who receive many needy emails. (That said, some submissions are indeed dumb.)

TMN: Why isn’t Intelligent Life written anonymously like The Economist?

EB: Because thoughtful people are often skeptical of authority, papers tend to deliver their editorial pronouncements anonymously. For a paper like The Economist to work as it does—as a weekly digest of what you should know about the world, capped with advice for leaders—it helps to imagine the author as some sandy-haired Brit with a sonorous voice, furrowed brow, and grand library, who exhales sage analysis from his leather armchair. No one wants to take advice from some sweaty journalist in a bad shirt. The Economist’s anonymity also helps journalists put away their egos and toe the party line, which involves not only a cohesive political sensibility but also a cleanly distilled writing style.

Intelligent Life, on the other hand, is full of the color that The Economist might leave out. Because we all know that the world is filled with flawed, beautiful, hungry, arrogant, and wondrous people, it makes sense to crave stories both by and about them.

TMN: What’s the best advice you’d give to your childhood self?

EB: I guess it would be that the things that feel hard will in fact pay dividends with time. Also, don’t sweat the hair; it’s about to get better. —Erik Bryan, Oct. 27, 2009

Jonathan Ames is a Brooklyn-based writer, an occasional boxer, and the creator of the new HBO series Bored to Death about a Brooklyn-based writer named Jonathan Ames, played by Jason Schwartzman, who becomes a private detective.

TMN: Why set the show so distinctively in Carroll Gardens and other actual New York locales?

Jonathan Ames: It’s where I live. I live in downtown Brooklyn. I love this area and I know it’s never quite been presented on television, so it was a real opportunity for me to kind of show New York’s new Left Bank.

TMN: How is the character Jonathan Ames like the real Jonathan Ames?

JA: He shares some of my DNA, but really he’s his own individual that Jason Schwartzman is creating. Some of the work that I write turns up, so there are similarities. He dresses somewhat like me. We based his wardrobe off of my wardrobe. He lives in Brooklyn. He has my name. Some of his emotions are similar to mine, but he’s, you know, he’s Jason’s invention.

TMN: How involved are you in the production of the show on a day-to-day basis?

JA: I’m very involved. I’m there at the first shot and the last shot. I sat next to the director for every take. I have the final edit on every episode. I picked every costume for every actor. I’ve been called a “show mother,” so I’m real involved in everything.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your workspace?

JA: My favorite object would be my landlord’s cat. The cat’s name is Minimus. He belongs to my landlord but always visits me. This is his secret hideout where he likes to get away, like a teenager, and smoke pot.

TMN: Will you be getting back in the boxing ring anytime soon?

JA: I hope so. I want to start training again, and hopefully some—you know, all my matches have been kind of insane bouts, in a way, against other artists. I’ll see if another strange match presents itself. I’m drawn to these things where maybe it’s a fantasy, you know, another fantasy of being the hero.

TMN: What are you working on next?

JA: Well, I just finished really working on the show maybe a month and a half ago, and it was really time-consuming. So I’m thinking about, if we got another season, I’m kind of preparing and taking notes for that [HBO has renewed Bored to Death since this interview was conducted—ed.]. I have to revise my screenplay that I wrote for my novel Wake Up Sir!, and I have an idea for another screenplay. I had a book come out in July, The Double Life Is Twice As Good, and my graphic novel, The Alcoholic, just came out in paperback.

TMN: Who is your archnemesis?

JA: Myself. He’s the only one that gives me a hard time.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at, but wish you were?

JA: I wish I were better at fixing things, and I wish I were more mechanically inclined. And also I wish I were a better lover. Yeah, better mechanical inclination and a better lover. —Erik Bryan, Oct. 13, 2009

Tracey Thorn is an English singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly three decades. She is probably best known as being one half of the highly acclaimed duo Everything but the Girl. She lives in London with her husband and three children, and has recently finished recording her third solo album.

TMN: There was about 25 years between the release of your first and second solo albums. Now, two years after “Out of the Woods,” we’re getting another. Why are we so lucky?

Tracey Thorn: Well, in between the release of the first and second solo albums there was a 25-year gap, but it was filled with nine Everything but the Girl albums, so it’s not like I was doing nothing for all that time. It works out at about an album every two to three years, so in fact, not much has changed.

TMN: What can we expect of the new album in terms of sound and style?

TT: It’s a much more acoustic record than “Out of the Woods.” It’s very simple in arrangement. I deliberately wanted to work with a more limited palette this time, and try to create a more consistent mood rather than being as all-inclusive as on the last record. So it’s not such a poppy record, and there’s a move away from programming and from the dancefloor.

TMN: Is Everything but the Girl likely to come off hiatus any time soon?

TT: My answer is still I don’t know. I think Ben and I both enjoy now having a bit of separate creative space after all those years of sharing that space with each other.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

TT: Driving (I’m so bad I haven’t driven for 20 years). Swimming.

TMN: What other artists or movements have inspired or influenced the new album?

TT: I can’t answer this question. It’s not how I think. Reviewers point out influences; they’re never conscious.

TMN: What’s changed about your creative process since becoming a mother?

TT: It used to be a continuous thing; now it has huge holes in it. Months and months go by where the “creative process” does not exist for me. Then, thankfully, it reappears from time to time.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your workspace?

TT: My little reed organ, bought for almost nothing on eBay. I write songs on it and they all sound like hymns.

TMN: On your MySpace blog, you recently announced getting married earlier this year after a “27-year engagement.” Why did you decide that this was the right time?

TT: Like many things in our life, it was a somewhat random decision, made on impulse. You know what they say, “marry in haste, repent at leisure.” Let’s hope we don’t regret being so reckless.

TMN: If you could change one law, what would it be?

TT: Well, I’d certainly be tougher on homeopathy.

TMN: What’s the best advice you’d give to your childhood self?

TT: Take up yoga. You have back problems ahead, and it’s never too soon. —Erik Bryan, Sep. 30, 2009

Carl Deal and Tia Lessin are the producers and directors of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Trouble the Water, which follows the lives of Ninth Ward residents Kimberly and Scott Roberts during the aftermath of Katrina’s devastation of their homes in New Orleans. The film won the Gotham Independent Film Award and the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, and is now available on DVD. Both Lessin and Deal continue to advocate assistance for impoverished, post-Katrina communities.

TMN: How did you initially come across Kimberly and Scott Roberts’s tape?

Tia Lessin: Carl and I wanted to do something in the aftermath of Katrina. We were stunned and outraged by the failures of our government, and, like so many others, we decided to channel that into action. So we put ourselves in central Louisiana about a week after the levees broke to make a film. That’s where Kimberly and Scott Roberts approached us, about 10 days after the levees failed. We were all at a Red Cross shelter. They were just at the beginning of their post-Katrina journey, and we had just been shut down by the military after filming several days with Louisiana National Guard soldiers returning home from Baghdad. Kimberly pitched us on the video she had shot on the days before and during Katrina: “What I got, I’ve been saving it, ‘cause I don’t want to give it to nobody local. This needs to be worldwide. ‘Cause all the footage I’ve seen on TV, nobody got what I got. I got right there in the hurricane.”

When we first saw the home video, we were stunned. It was most definitely not the Katrina broadcast on television. It was ground zero, intimate, raw. Our editor and co-producer T. Woody Richman painstakingly worked with it, and 15 minutes of that footage anchors the first part of Trouble the Water. Working with award-winning cinematographer P.J. Raval, we then filmed with Kimberly and Scott on and off for the next two years. And through all that, we were able to distill so much into one story—the abandonment of the city’s poorest, the incarcerated, and the hospitalized to Katrina’s floodwaters, and the government’s failures long before, during, and after the storm.

TMN: In what ways, as mentioned in the film, is “Katrina still going on?”

Carl Deal: Our executive producer, Danny Glover, put it this way: “When the hurricane struck, it did not turn the region into a Third World country—it revealed one.” The region and people along the Gulf Coast had been neglected by government institutions long before the levees failed in New Orleans, and Trouble the Water provides a window into that experience. And in the four years now since Katrina hit, very little has been done to reverse that. Tens of thousands of people still wish to return to their homes, but can’t. And those who have continue to face hardships. Rents have doubled and many homes remain unsafe; living-wage jobs remain scarce; the tourist economy remains the first option for redevelopment, as opposed to more sustainable and life-supporting development such as creating a green infrastructure would have; and schools continue to underperform. So the institutional failures that Katrina represented are still going on. Fortunately, the efforts to counter those failures are strong and meaningful.

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office?

TL & CD: The copper belt buckle we received from the Sundance Film Festival is our favorite object in the office. We are so grateful for that recognition. There’s also a picture of us and the team at Sundance feeling the joy after the Grand Jury prize was announced.

TMN: Have there been any significant efforts to rebuild the Ninth Ward?

CD: There are so many residents fighting every day to rebuild their communities, with and without government support. Mostly without. And of course there are so many meaningful projects, like the green building project of the Make it Right Foundation that is creating safe and sustainable housing close to the levee in the lower Ninth Ward. And colleges and high schools continue to send students to the region to volunteer, through alternative spring break programs, churches, and other community groups. We’ve listed on our web site many of the organizations that are working for equity in the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, but so much more needs to be done.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

TL: Ice skating.


 —Erik Bryan, Sep. 23, 2009

Given the title of “El Presidente” at mental_floss, Will Pearson developed and published the magazine’s first issue with Mangesh Hattikudur while they were both still students at Duke University. Since then, the magazine has become a staple for “knowledge junkies” and has spawned a web site, books, a line of trivia games and puzzles, and some assertively nerdy T-shirts (“There’s No Right Way to Eat a Rhesus”).

TMN: How instrumental was Duke in getting your first issue published?

WP: Well, the president of Duke did suggest that we change the name of mental_floss to “Conversations.” No lie. But other than that strange piece of advice, it’s difficult to imagine this publication existing without the early support from Duke. It wasn’t just the administration, but professors and others on campus who advised us and pointed us to successful alumni for additional advice. The first two issues of mental_floss were published and distributed on Duke’s campus before we ever distributed an issue to bookstores. That couldn’t have happened without all the resources available to us as students. Mangesh and I are still very close to Duke and spend time each semester there talking to classes and giving back to the school in any way we can.

TMN: Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings has written for the magazine. Have you ever challenged him to a game of trivia?

WP: Yeah, I destroyed him at Trivial Pursuit. Turns out the whole Ken Jennings thing was a hoax. Kidding. I have not played him in a game of trivia, but my guess is if we played a game called “Let’s see who answers these 100 questions the quickest,” he’d answer at least 95 of them before I could. Ken has a remarkable ability to access information in his giant brain much more quickly than anyone else I’ve ever known. Whereas I’m the kind who hears a question, grabs a bite to eat, hops in the car, turns on the radio, and then BAM!, “Eudora Welty! That’s the answer I was looking for.”

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office?

WP: Our brand-new pizza boxes. We decided to make care packages for parents and friends to send to college students, and had our own pizza boxes printed so that we could deliver the flossy items in a very dorm-friendly package.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

WP: Sprinting. I hate running but I’d love to be really fast just to show off my speed every once in a while. Our art director, Winslow Taft, and I have an ongoing “Who’s better at sports?” competition going. So far we’ve only bowled, played pool, and thrown a tennis ball at a cup on the other end of the office, and I’m in the lead. But I’m nervous what will happen if we ever play anything that involves actual athletic skills.

TMN: Some have argued that increasing internet use is a threat to general knowledge.

WP: I’m not sure it’s as much of a threat to general knowledge as it is a threat to our ability to do individual tasks really well. But there’s no question that someone with a little discipline can make use of the internet as the greatest research tool ever created. I do think we run the risk of realizing that we can now do 100 things in a day instead of five, but end up not doing those 100 things very well because we’re zipping through everything and always multi-tasking. Even as I’ve been typing the answer to this question, Outlook has told me 5 times that I have new emails and I have to check them. Okay, I’ll stop and focus on this. I find myself jumping back and forth between tasks all the time, and it takes real focus to make sure I do each thing well rather than rushing through each one just to get on to the next.

TMN: What’s in the future for mental_floss?

WP: I’d be pretending if I told you I knew exactly where I want this company to go. I like the fact that we’re small enough to be able to come up with new ideas for products or web projects and jump on them immediately. We don’t have to have a 20-year plan to decide we want to start on something like our “In-A-Box” series (Law School in a Box, Med School in a Box, MBA in a Box). But being a small company also creates challenges because there are a million projects we’d like to test, but we can only tackle a few at a time.

TMN: Are you currently involved in any non-mental_floss-related projects?

WP: I’m always kicking around other business ideas and enjoy helping friends work through the early stages of a business launch, but most of my non-mental_floss, non-family, non-leisure time is spent working with an organization called Magic Moments. We grant wishes to children in Alabama who are suffering from life-threatening or life-altering medical conditions. They, like many organizations, are struggling to bring in enough money in this recession, so I’m working to help them find creative ways to fundraise.

TMN: What makes you irrationally angry?

WP: Talk radio. But I’m not sure it’s irrational. —Erik Bryan, Aug. 26, 2009

In his new book, poet and self-described “vegetarian sin eater” CAConrad develops a theosophy based on the music and celebrity of Elvis Presley. Using prose poems, found art, and snippets of conversational dialog, Advanced Elvis Course details CAConrad’s excursions to Memphis where he interacts with acolytes of the King.

TMN: What prompted your journey to Graceland?

CAC: It was actually many trips, and they weren’t prompted—not at first they weren’t. Although there were several trips friends wanted to take with me, I said no, because Graceland is a meditation into the best parts of the soul of America, and you feel it and meet other pilgrims much easier when alone.

The book isn’t a travel book, or a guide to Graceland. It’s actually about the investigations into what’s happening with this spiritual leader Elvis Presley in the bigger picture of our world. The book sets out to investigate “out loud,” so to speak, or investigate with everyone “out loud.”

The queer content of the book has prompted an angry stir from some of the more conservative minds surrounding Elvis and his legacy. I’ve taken to sending a reply to all hate mail with this link where I break down for them the lyrics to “Jailhouse Rock,” which really pisses them off. It’s no surprise though, sadly, since reports show that gay bashing is up by 29 percent. But I’ve been tested by fire; bring it on, I say!

TMN: It seemed as though you were openly welcomed into the community of Elvis fans in Memphis. Was this as it actually happened or were anti-gay aspects of your experience omitted?

CAC: Oh, I would never leave such things out, if they happened. If I met any homophobes there I didn’t know it. Everyone’s so high on Elvis at Graceland; no time for the haters. It’s funny you say this, though, because the book was reviewed by a gay newspaper and the reviewer was annoyed that some people in the book acted like I was a unicorn or something. But I just figured that the reviewer doesn’t get outside his immediate circles much. When I’m outside big cities people often act like I’m cool because I’m gay. That’s funny because a lot of gay people are not cool at all—gay Republicans for instance. And trust me when I say that straight Republicans are even cooler than gay Republicans!

TMN: Why is it so easy for so many people to see Elvis as a divine figure?

CAC: In her memoir, Elvis and Me, Priscilla Presley recalls Elvis asking, why, out of all the people in the universe, had he been chosen to influence so many millions of souls? Elvis was a Capricorn, born January 8th, and eight rules the center of Saturn, the ruling planet of Capricorn, which is all about getting things done, no bones about it! Never forget Elvis’s signature, “TCB: Taking Care of Business!” He was also born a twin, and Elvis knew he absorbed his dead brother’s life-force at birth, setting his course and setting the high-octane engine for that course.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your office?

CAC: The photograph my friend Heather Raquel Phillips took for the book, and not because it’s a picture of me, but because I really feel that picture, reaching for the giant blue E of Elvis in the sky! I told her about the dream I had and she said, “Let’s do it!” She’s a terrific photographer; she can do anything!

TMN: Do you think a person has to choose a side in the Beatles/Elvis debate?

CAC: I just quote John Lennon, who said, “Before Elvis there was nothing!” John answered it for us.

TMN: Why format the book as you did, as a series of prose, poems, and snippets of conversation?

CAC: My main voice is as a poet, and any poet worth his or her salt knows the true value of breaking the rules. By allowing the book to come out of me just as it wanted to, instead of forcing it into the restraints of formally acceptable forms, much more was able to be expressed. I believe strongly in the hybrid-genre building of a book. It’s a joy to write this way, and so far the feedback has been that it’s a good read as well.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

CAC: Bringing the dead back to life. I despise death, hate that we are so temporary. There’s so much to do! It seems impossible to do it all. And there are so many people I’ve loved who are dead. I really hate death. I’m opposed to death, more than anything else in life!

TMN: What are you working on next?

CAC: Another long-term project, The Book of Frank, recently came out. But I’m hard at work on my (Soma)tic Poetry, a poetry which investigates life between Soma, or the divine, with Somatic, or the flesh of things. (This is something updated monthly.) And I’m in the middle of finishing a very exciting collaborative (Soma)tic experiment with my friend Thom Donovan, and this involves the music of Arthur Russell.

I’m also working on a book of Astral Projection poems, poems written as a result of out-of-body experiences. Also there is a collaborative book I’m working on with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems, and this is coming out in January 2010 from Factory School Books. I’m very excited to be working with so many brilliant poets, and I wouldn’t trade this time for any other!

TMN: Would you be willing to relocate if necessary?

CAC: But I relocate every day, keeping my mind open to the undiscovered beauties. And I don’t care if that sounds corny, I mean it! —Erik Bryan, Aug. 4, 2009

After launching a music career built on positivity and partying, Andrew W.K. keeps busy by going in several directions at once. He is co-owner of lower Manhattan’s Santos Party House, has appeared in and supplied music for episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and recorded an album of J-Pop covers. He currently hosts a game show for teenagers called Destroy Build Destroy on Cartoon Network, and is putting the finishing touches on a solo piano album, ‘55 Cadillac, due in September. (Interview edited from a recent phone conversation.)

TMN: How much were you involved in developing Destroy Build Destroy?

AWK: The show’s creator is Dan Taberski. We met a long time ago, when he was working at the Daily Show; he was producing a segment about college students not partying enough. It was a lot of fun, and it was really special to me that after all these years—that was probably six years ago—he was now running his own production company and had moved to Hollywood and was working with Cartoon Network on a new show.

I had been working with Cartoon Network for several years developing different show ideas. When this show concept came up, I met with some of the people involved and was just blown away by the idea of combining explosions and teenagers. It really hooked me. They were looking for a person to sort of pull it all together and I must say I was extremely honored to be given the role of the host, of the cheerleader, the main guy on the show, running the show, sort of the ringleader.

TMN: What was the most terrifying moment of your childhood?

AWK: That depends on when you define childhood starting and ending. What age is childhood—is it until 21? I mean, the most scary moment of my life was September 11th. I was still pretty young then.

TMN: How did you pick which songs to use for your J-pop album?

AWK: Well, we actually asked my fan base in Japan to vote for their favorite songs, the songs they would like me to cover. What really appealed to me was that I had never done an album of cover songs. I’d only released a few cover songs before that and they were primarily released in Japan. I did a cover of the Mickey Mouse club theme song march—[singing] M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E—I did a version of that and I liked that, but I had sort of stayed away from doing covers because when it came to songs I really loved, I was happy with the original recording or the recordings that I’d already heard. It didn’t occur to me until later that even if you love a song and love a recording, that you can add something to it, or just enjoy the process of recording it.

And I liked the idea that I was hearing these songs for the first time. I didn’t have a relationship with them yet. I could approach them from a fresh point of view, which has been very rare for me. So, just being able to discover all this new music and dive right into it was really exciting.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your studio?

AWK: I don’t have favorites. It’s just a really stressful feeling to me to try to pick one thing in life, whether it’s a favorite song, favorite object, favorite person, favorite place, favorite experience, favorite restaurant. Why cut things down like that?

Here, I found a thing: it’s a life-cast—a real life-cast—of Jimmy Durante’s nose. It was given to me by a Hollywood make-up and special-effects artist. It’s definitely an intense object.

TMN: You recently gave your first spoken-word performance—

AWK: I never liked the term “spoken word.” I like to call it a vocal performance or a non-musical performance. “Spoken word” to me sounds so dry. Like you’re just going to see somebody speaking, but it’s so much more than that. I mean, it’s performance. Is a comedian doing spoken word? It’s just a different mode of performance where I’m maybe going up on stage without instruments or going up on stage without any sort of particular plan. I mean, I really try to go in spontaneous—that’s what makes it so much different than singing a song.

TMN: What can we expect from ‘55 Cadillac?

AWK: I can say right now that I’ve spent more time on the artwork than I did on recording the album. That was the whole point—to take a very scary step to see what it would be like to record something where you just sit down and play and you put that out.

I recorded for about two hours, then I picked the best of those two hours and edited it together. Normally I’ve recorded albums where I wrote songs and worked on writing the songs for a long time before even beginning to record them, and then the recording process would be very long and involved with lots of overdubs and fine-tuning and fixing and redoing. I mean, just a very painstaking process. That’s how I enjoyed it. But I wanted to see what it was like to do a totally different album. I’ve played piano—that was the first instrument I ever learned—I guess for 26 years now.

When there’s that feeling of someone just playing for their own pleasure, that’s what I wanted to get in touch with. This one is just Andrew W.K. playing piano and seeing what happens.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at, but wish you were?

AWK: I would like to be able to ski or snowboard better. My wife is a very, very advanced snowboarder. She used to be professional, she was very good, and I would like to be able to do more of that with her.

TMN: What makes you irrationally angry?

AWK: Feeling short on time. It’s been, like, the worst feeling in my life, and I’ve noticed that almost every bad day or moment of stress I’ve ever had, it’s all come from a feeling of not having enough time. Any other big issue or situation or ordeal I had to go through, any sort of bad news—it’s never caused me the anguish that that feeling of not having enough time has had. Like that feeling of not even having the ability to start thinking about what you want to be thinking about. It’s been really torturous.

There’s a point where you’re either going to feel awful or sick from stress or you just let things go as they go. I try to have more faith now that I’ll finish whatever I’m meant to finish and that I’ll do whatever I’m meant to do and whatever falls by the wayside obviously wasn’t meant to be.

TMN: You recently turned 30. Did it signify a turning point for you?

AWK: Oh, it was massive. Everything changed. I didn’t really notice it happening until it happened, but there was just a lot of baggage, a lot of fears, a lot of hesitations, nervousness, mindsets that were not helping me in the world; they just sort of stopped right after my 30th birthday, and I mean right after, like that day even.

It seemed like everything that I used to think was really hard just wasn’t hard anymore, and it wasn’t like it was easy but—it’s just, like, you just do it. I’ve also reinterpreted the feeling of what it is to be nervous or scared as not being a bad thing or not being a scary thing or not being something to avoid, it’s more like just getting yourself prepared.

The way I guess a lot of people put it, and I totally agree, is that now I officially feel like an adult—in the best way. There are these phases that don’t really mean much, but we can put labels on them. You’re a child, then you’re a teenager, then you become a young adult, and then there’s this period between 19 to 29, those 10 years when you figure out how to become an adult. And it doesn’t have to do with being responsible or being boring or being resigned from having fun or giving up on things. It’s just—you realize you can go fully into the world with a clean slate as yourself, and you don’t need to have anything to do with those earlier versions of yourself that would’ve held you back. My fears and my reservations about life—those don’t exist anymore. I’m not that same person. And none of us are the same, even day-to-day. Something about turning 30 really made that clear to me. —Erik Bryan, Jul. 22, 2009

Cartoonist Nina Paley is the creator of Sita Sings the Blues, an interpretation of the Ramayana, the Hindu epic. The film was released online earlier this year and set to the music of blues singer Annette Hanshaw. In the difficult process of acquiring rights to use Hanshaw’s music, Paley became a free-culture advocate and chose to license her highly praised film through Creative Commons.

TMN: How did you come to notice the themes of longing and devotion in the Ramayana and Annette Hanshaw’s music, and then tie them to your own life?

NP: How could I not notice? These themes were screaming at me. It was like being smacked in the head. The surprise to me was that no one else had made this movie.

TMN: What’s the best advice you’d give to your childhood self?

NP: Have faith, I will always love you.

TMN: In the film you use several different styles of representation for the same set of characters, some classical and others very modern and idiosyncratic. Why?

NP: Ramayana art spans centuries and thousands of miles. By varying the art styles, I hoped to give a tiny taste of the breadth of Ramayana art that’s out there. Also, I varied the narrative technique throughout the film—some parts are told in song, others unscripted narration, others very stilted dialogue. Each narrative style has its corresponding visual style. And I didn’t want to get bored while working on the film. Varying the styles kept things interesting for me.

TMN: Do you feel that all art should be “free culture,” or is Sita a special case?

NP: Here is my official position on copyright:

Now that I’m a full-time free culture activist, some have expressed the concern, “You don’t think there should be any copyright at all! You want to take away my right to protect my intellectual property!”

Let me assure you this is not true.

I completely support your right to copy-restrict your works. The more you copyright (restrict access to) your work, the more wide-open the field is for free culture like Sita Sings the Blues. Open-licensed work has a tremendous competitive advantage over copy-restricted work. So by all means, please “protect” your “property.”

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office/workplace?

NP: 1. My bed. 2. My cloisonne Sita pins, with which I fell immediately and unnaturally in love when they arrived a few weeks ago. They don’t need electrons to work! They’re real, solid objects. They blow my mind.

TMN: How have Hindu audiences responded to your interpretation of a Hindu text?

NP: Most Hindus have responded very positively. Most of the film’s collaborators are Hindu. The film has enjoyed tremendous support from Hindus in the U.S. and in India.

Hindutvadis are another story. Few actually bother to watch the film, but they strongly object to the very idea of it.

Be sure not to confuse Hindu with Hindutva. They are very different. It’s sort of like the difference between “Christian” and “Army of God.”

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

NP: If I really wished I were good at something, I’d find a way. However there are many things I wish I could be good at with no effort. These include:

• Playing guitar (I can’t even attempt it, because the strings hurt my fingers too much) or piano (I’m psychologically blocked from learning because my older sister is a brilliant, accomplished pianist and I could never compare with her—also, too much work, and potential hand strain).
• Command line programming (I’m impressed when friends do it, but can’t be bothered to learn).
• Touch typing (same as above).
• Proper accounting (I simply hate it).
• French. Actually, even with intense effort, I was unable to learn French. I am ashamed.
• Taekwondo, or any respectable martial art. I’d like to have multiple black belts. But not so much that I’d actually take a class.

TMN: What are you working on next?

NP: I’m hoping to make a series of animated musical shorts about free speech. We’re still seeking funds, but I’m slowly starting on the first one anyway.

TMN: Who is your archnemesis?

NP: Myself, of course. —Erik Bryan, Jul. 7, 2009

Back in the formative days of the mp3-blog world, Ryan Catbird was king with The Catbirdseat. Since then he’s started his own label (Catbird Records, with a slew of new releases) and founded MBV Music, an amalgam of music blogging’s finest that recently won an Eddy.

TMN: What was the impetus behind developing MBV?

RC: Everyone knows that the media landscape is going through some very dramatic changes. I’d say this has been especially true of the last 18-24 months or so, and it was during that time it became apparent to me that blogs were starting to be viewed as more credible media outlets (as much as I still want to punch someone in the face when they refer to me as “blogger”). It seemed like the industry was beginning to see many potential opportunities in the music blogs. This was manifested most clearly in aggressive music-blogger courting from ad networks and entities like Buzznet and MOG (in my opinion, all ostensibly the same thing; they look at the blogs and all they see is built-in traffic they can slap some ads on). I mean, it struck me that none of these entities really seemed to give a damn about the blogs themselves. It was as if they had come across some wonderful plants growing in the wild, and were content to pluck off the fruit—as long as the fruit kept coming. No need to worry about the actual plant; it could take care of itself, right? And if it died, so what?

So rather than sit back and just wait for the ad guys or social networks or old media publishers to define what the future of this online music space should be, I decided that we (the guys who had been waist-deep in the “music blogosphere” since it first arose) should take a bigger role in defining that future. I think a music blog can be so much more than just a guy sitting alone in his apartment, posting mp3s. But it’s not gonna happen until someone acts to make it happen.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

RC: Tanning.

TMN: Why did you start a label?

RC: Oh, I had thought about doing it for a while, but it was a combination of two things that finally cinched it for me in 2005. The first was my discovery of a little unknown band from Springfield, Mo. (Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin), and my intense desire to get them into the ears of more people—this was May of 2005, and their album Broom didn’t get rerelesed on Polyvinyl until October 2006. The second factor, believe it or not, was implementing advertising into my site. Back in the day, it was looked on very unfavorably for a site to have ads (“Their integrity is blown! They’re just jockeying for ad dollars!”), and I had resisted it since my site’s inception in ‘02. Truth be told, I probably would have continued to resist, were it not for a long phone call from a very persistent ad network that finally convinced me to give it a go. I mean, I myself was totally hyper-conscious of the “ad dollars vs. purity of intent” dynamic, and so things really only clicked after I realized that I could stick ads on the site and then “Robin Hood” that ad money directly into releasing records by bands I wanted people to hear.

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office?

RC: The painting in this photo. “Untitled” by Richard Aldrich.

TMN: As a label, would you like to compete on the level of a Matador or a Sub Pop? Or bigger?

RC: All I’m trying to do is just nudge these bands out into the water, maybe teach them to swim a little bit—but ideally, someone with a big ol’ boat will eventually come along and pull them onboard. I mean, Catbird Records is really nothing more than a logical extension of what I’ve been doing with the site since the beginning; it’s just another way of me saying, “Hey, I think this music is pretty great; check this out!”

TMN: So, why fatherhood, and why now? Will you try to persuade or dissuade baby Catbird from following in your footsteps? What are those footsteps, as you see them?

RC: Dude, I find this question so incredibly strange! I’m not really sure how to answer other than to say that sometimes in life, when things are right, they’re just right—and this was one of those times. I mean, wow, how does one answer the question, “Why did you want to be a father?” I think I’ll save the unpacking of that one for my upcoming Psychology Today interview.

TMN: What was the most terrifying moment of your childhood?

RC: Riding the legendary “Beast” coaster at King’s Island in Cincinnati. Actually, that’s a lie, I must confess. I was always too terrified to ever actually ride it.

TMN: What makes you irrationally angry?

RC: “SEO Wizards,” “Social Media Experts,” “Personal Brand Consultants,” “Twitter Strategists.” I could go on, but I’m getting irrationally angry. —Erik Bryan, Jun. 23, 2009

A native of New York City, John Schaefer has been a WNYC radio host and music curator for more than 25 years. His long-running show “New Sounds” explores a diverse galaxy of genres old and new, and his program “Soundcheck” interviews artists and covers industry news. “Soundcheck” also recently began live broadcasts from the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in Manhattan.

TMN: You recently broadcasted live with Lou Reed and Santigold. How’d it go?

JS: The first broadcast from the Greene Space was, like most live “remote” shows, a case of barely controlled pandemonium. We might’ve been a little too ambitious, but we wanted to try everything at once: live acoustic music, live electric music, live phone calls, live comments from the audience in the space, a slide show (also available on the web site to radio listeners), and several audio clips that would be audio-only on the radio but which we thought needed to be video clips as well for the live audience. Also, we had commissioned a work whose premiere came down pretty close to the wire, which was nerve-wracking. And we had Lou Reed, who needed to be treated like, well, Lou Reed. You can’t just say, “Sit over there for a while and we’ll call you when we need you.”

Anyway, almost everything worked. Santigold’s clip from the music video “L.E.S. Artistes” ended up being audio-only; we don’t know what happened to the video. Lou did a version of “Romeo Had Juliet” which included a little surprise: two f-bombs that are not in the original. But the engineer was alert and able to catch them before they hit the air. Thankfully, our on-air delay system was working too.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at, but wish you were?

JS: Soccer. I try to play every Sunday. Playing soccer in New York is like a magnet for immigrants who miss the game. Mexican, French, Italian, English—the game has become a Benetton ad, and the level of play has risen way above my very mediocre skills.

TMN: “New Sounds” has an eclectic approach, but tends toward the obscure. How did the format start?

JS: “New Sounds” was never intended to be willfully obscure, and in fact some of the composers who were still pretty obscure when I started the show are now well known. Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, recent Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Reich are just a few examples. Ravi Shankar, Keith Jarrett, Yo Yo Ma—these are top-drawer musical talents. But the show was specifically started to play types of music that were falling between the cracks—the cracks between rock, classical, jazz, folk, and world music, and the cracks between the ever-narrowing radio formats out there. So almost by definition you hear a lot of music you won’t hear in many other places.

But “obscure” is a funny word, because if you’re not in a certain musical circle, even the best-known names are obscure. If I described someone as having the street smarts of Jamie T and the no-holds-barred stage presence of Girl Talk, well, those are absolutely obscure names to the millions of people not into the UK indie rock scene or the mashup/sampling scene.

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office?

JS: My favorite thing in the office is the acoustic guitar that Moby left in the studio one day a few years back. I don’t think he was intentionally donating a guitar to us, but when we told him it was still in the studio he didn’t want it back, so I now keep it in the office, where it’s available for emergency use if a musician needs it. I use it myself because it’s a hell of a better guitar than the beat up old Epiphone I have at home.

TMN: Has the digital revolution had a significant effect on your program?

JS: The digital thing has been great from a purely practical point of view. Composers can send links instead of CDs, and if I am putting together a program of pieces that are thematically related, and suddenly think of something that would fit but that may not be in our library, I can usually find it and grab it somewhere, either through eMusic, or by contacting the musicians and having them post something online, or in the worst case scenario buying it from iTunes. Actually, with the DRM-free iTunes, that’s no longer a bad option.

TMN: What was the most terrifying moment of your childhood?

JS: This is sort of like the old “wow, you’re from New York—were you ever mugged?” question. I never know how to answer it because there are so many episodes. Growing up in New York in the ‘70s was proof that what didn’t kill you made you stronger. But once, when I was in second grade, I got out of school, went to the bus stop, and waited for my younger brother to come out from his first grade class. He never did. He was, for some reason, off early that day, but I either didn’t know or had forgotten. All I knew was that my job was to get my brother home on the bus—a city bus, not a school bus. After awhile, it started getting dark, and the school was dark and deserted. I was really scared and didn’t know what to do, and finally realized my brother wasn’t coming out of the school. I got on a bus, went home, and found police at the house and my mom a wreck and my father out scouring the neighborhood. I think I might’ve been more terrified at that moment than I was standing alone watching the buses go by. —Erik Bryan, Jun. 3, 2009

Cadillac Man, as he was known on the streets, spent the better part of the past 15 years homeless in New York City. After losing a managerial position at a Pepsi plant, and then at a Hell’s Kitchen meat market, his second marriage dissolved. With nowhere else to go, he began living on the streets, making a living by collecting cans and bottles for recycling. He started a diary around this time, and his collected works, covering the highs and lows of his life in the mid-1990s, was published on March 17. Land of the Lost Souls (excerpt here) focuses on the relationships he developed while on the street in an effort to memorialize the lives of those often overlooked by general society.

TMN: Your first reading of the stories from this memoir took place in a homeless shelter. What was that like?

CM: Ah, it felt so good being amongst my brethen talking “street.” Reading my stories, looking into their eyes, connecting our souls into one being. My voice is theirs, to be spread to all those who will listen and not judge for we are people too. Only our circumstances are different; we bleed and cry just like you. Empathy!

TMN: Most of the stories in your book take place in the mid-1990s. Why do you tend to focus more on that time in your life?

CM: Yes, like a newborn child, this was my new beginning, a new identity. The old me was gone, the past meaningless, and the future ahead so filled with uncertainites, I wondered: Will I survive this ordeal? Become just another faceless unknown? Those early years taught me that even though life tossed a curve ball I was still able to connect with and not strikeout, meaning death. Also, it gave me purpose. The more I helped others, the more reason to live.

TMN: Throughout the book, the phrase “word is bond” keeps showing up. Did you adopt it before or after you became homeless, or is it just a ’90s thing?

CM: “Word?” “Word is bond!” Through traveling to many encampments, listening in on conversations, when someone finished what they had to say or was interrupted by another with “WORD?” meant, “Is that what you say is the truth, straight up?” “Word is bond!” meaning yes, no bullshit, the absolute truth said the replier. Some street people, depending where you are may use “word up?” but the reply is still the same. “Word is bond.” I used it at the Mens’ Shelter reading and they all knew I was speaking from the heart, no bullshit. Like everybody else, we don’t like being lied to.

TMN: What are you working on next?

CM: Still working on the latter years, 2000 to the present. So many stories yet to be told. A novel someday, and a “how to survive on the streets” guide book. Though I don’t wish it to occur on anybody, the book will contain useful hints, the dos and don’ts on the streets.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

CM: Wish I was better able to put my thoughts faster on paper and the computer. Adjusting to living inside again, fortunately I have a loving woman by my side who has the patience and understands where I came from. As I mentioned before, this is a new beginning and I want it to last.

TMN: How do you think being a police officer before becoming homeless made your experience different from others’?

CM: Several things they teach you in law enforcemet are observation and how to handle situations that most people don’t come across in their everyday lives. Because of this training, I was able to defuse and save my butt as well as others’. Some call it heroics. I say to that, it’s the right thing to do.

• use of a hand weapon (nightstick, gun)
• observation (intent, body language)
• the ability to take action with little or no hesitation rather than the normal shock/uninvolvement that occurs in society

TMN: Early in your book, you describe setting up a “peanut perimeter” alarm system. Did you come up with this trick or were you shown it by someone else?

CM: I saw someone—this one guy sleeping behind his wagon—use it. When I stepped there it was amazing how that sound carried through the night. I thought, “what a great idea.” I used it most of the time after that.

TMN: What’s one thing the average person could do to help the situation of homeless people?

CM: By donations to soup kitchens, clothing donations, anywhere where the finances go more directly to the clients. Too much goes toward administrative costs and other hidden agendas. Also, the public could be better educated about who we are and why we are here. They often believe they live far removed from our way of life, but in fact they do not. Losing everything could happen to anyone at any time.

TMN: What is your favorite object? (a particular book, a fire hydrant on your street, a keepsake from an old friend, etc.)

CM: The main answer would be my wagon. It lives under the 33rd street viaduct in Astoria. Photos are on Google. Other answers considered are:

• my teeth
• my hat
• my writer’s chair, an office chair kept next to my wagon.

TMN: What keeps you sane?

CM: My writing, the loving company of my companion, the upcoming baseball season, coffee and smokes, and the wonderful people of Astoria. Bless them. —Erik Bryan, May. 25, 2009