Latest / The Russi Hive / Roz Chast and Patty Marx: Two-Minded Creature — Friendship as Creative Method

Transcript

Roz Chast and Patty Marx: Two-Minded Creature — Friendship as Creative Method · The Russi Hive

0:00
SPEAKER_06: I'm Alejandra Roosy, and this is the Roosy Hive.
0:04
SPEAKER_06: Conversations with people who treat their work and life as a creative practice.
0:08
SPEAKER_06: New Yorker legends Ross Chast and Patty Marks arrive with decades of serious credentials, zero interest in behaving solemnly, and eventually a ukulele recital.
0:18
SPEAKER_06: In this long, gloriously wayward conversation, friendship becomes creative method.
0:23
SPEAKER_06: Permission to be absurd, anxious, bossy, generous, and fully themselves.
0:28
SPEAKER_06: When Marks and Chast show up with instruments, the only sane response is surrender.
0:33
SPEAKER_06: This podcast is presented by Rico Moresca.
0:37
SPEAKER_06: Thank you for joining me.
0:38
SPEAKER_06: Patty Marks, Frost Chast, and welcome to the Rucy Hive Podcast.
0:43
SPEAKER_06: Thank you.
0:44
SPEAKER_06: I am still in disbelief that the two of you are actually sitting here today, but it just goes to show that if you're delusional enough, reality may sometimes cooperate.
0:53
SPEAKER_06: Would you agree?
0:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
0:54
SPEAKER_03: Should we tell her that we have nothing else to do?
0:59
SPEAKER_06: Oh well, speak for yourself.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I had to I had you know lunch with the Queen and that's true.
1:05
SPEAKER_06: I also want to thank you both for clarifying that 10 a.m.
1:08
SPEAKER_06: is not an actual time.
1:10
SPEAKER_03: We doubt it exists.
1:12
SPEAKER_06: It's a rumor spread by morning people.
1:14
SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:15
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
1:16
SPEAKER_06: So we are beginning in the late afternoon at a civilized hour, a long after the farmers have risen, but before the vampires report for duty.
1:26
SPEAKER_06: It's a golden weed spot.
1:29
SPEAKER_06: So are you ready for your hive card?
1:32
SPEAKER_03: Oh, this is like jeoparding.
1:34
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
1:34
SPEAKER_03: No, no, I don't know what this is.
1:36
SPEAKER_03: I'll take art for 20.
1:40
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
1:41
unknown: Okay.
1:42
SPEAKER_06: The Marx Chast, Chast Marks, is a rare two-minded creature that appears only in a few known habitats.
1:50
SPEAKER_06: The magazine page, the illustrated book, the joint interview, the odd podcast episode.
1:56
SPEAKER_06: It does poorly in open wilderness and should be observed only under controlled urban conditions.
2:04
SPEAKER_06: It thrives on misapplied common sense, the small catastrophes of daily life, and when necessary, ukulele arrangements.
2:14
SPEAKER_06: One half processes the world through premise, argument, and escalation, a line of comic reasoning that keeps going past the point of social safety with a terrifying commitment until the absurdity has to confess.
2:29
SPEAKER_06: The other half processes the world through drawing, caption, and compression, creating off-kilter interiors where private anxieties seep into the clutter of daily life until it seems to have a nervous system and an opinion.
2:44
SPEAKER_06: Does this seem accurate?
2:46
SPEAKER_03: This is a multiple choice question.
2:50
SPEAKER_06: Is it accurate or would you like to file a correction with the Department of Imaginary Beings?
3:02
SPEAKER_06: Well, I feel so original.
3:06
SPEAKER_06: All right, so the record will show that the creature has not objected.
3:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
3:11
SPEAKER_03: Make sure the creature does not go outside.
3:14
SPEAKER_03: The creature likes to sit.
3:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:16
SPEAKER_03: The creature thinks that nature, if must you must see it, should be seen from the window.
3:22
SPEAKER_06: As your mother said.
3:23
SPEAKER_03: As my mother said.
3:24
SPEAKER_03: Ross and I would agree a lot.
3:28
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
3:28
SPEAKER_06: Sitting is sitting is cool.
3:30
SPEAKER_06: I like it.
3:31
SPEAKER_06: My job and my hobby.
3:35
SPEAKER_06: All right, so you have both done an inconsiderate amount of work, which has unfortunately produced a long trail of impressive credentials.
3:44
SPEAKER_06: So instead of doing separate blocks, I briefly considered putting everything in a bag and letting people claim the facts as they came out, but that seemed a little bit too risky.
3:55
SPEAKER_03: And also there are not really tons of people here.
3:59
SPEAKER_06: Well, everybody else.
4:08
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
4:10
SPEAKER_06: All right.
4:11
SPEAKER_06: Where the trouble began: Patty, Abington, Pennsylvania.
4:14
SPEAKER_06: Roz, Brooklyn, New York.
4:17
SPEAKER_06: Official training and early institutions.
4:20
SPEAKER_06: Patty, Harvard, and the Harvard Lampoon, first woman elected there, followed by Saturday Night Live and Rugrats.
4:27
SPEAKER_06: Roz, Risdi, followed by Early Work in The Village Voice and National Lampoon.
4:33
SPEAKER_06: Long-term New Yorker exposure.
4:35
SPEAKER_06: Roz, your cartoons have been appearing in the magazine since 1978.
4:40
SPEAKER_06: And Patty, you have been writing for the magazine since 1989.
4:44
SPEAKER_06: Selected official recognition, Patty, two-time Thurber Prize finalist and Guggenheim Fellow.
4:51
SPEAKER_06: Ross, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Rubin Award, and recipient of the National Humanities Medal.
5:00
SPEAKER_06: True.
5:02
SPEAKER_06: Collaborative evidence, children's books, grown-up books, and the occasional ukulele Mind Meld, all of which we will be investigating shortly.
5:12
SPEAKER_06: Okay, so that's it for my resume tour.
5:14
SPEAKER_03: I think you forgot something.
5:15
SPEAKER_03: It's very, very, very important.
5:17
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
5:17
SPEAKER_03: Roz and I were the first and only our children, our first children's book, the first and only recipient of the Friedrich Medal, which was named after my air conditioner.
5:32
SPEAKER_06: Oh wow.
5:33
SPEAKER_06: I'm I'm so sorry for that oversight.
5:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's intimidating.
5:37
SPEAKER_06: I really apologize.
5:38
SPEAKER_06: Prestigious.
5:38
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
5:40
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
5:40
SPEAKER_06: All right.
5:41
SPEAKER_06: So moving forward, we're we are going to follow that final thread.
5:44
SPEAKER_06: Friendship as a creative method.
5:47
SPEAKER_06: How two people can notice the world differently, notice some of the same absurdities, and build a shared comic language over time.
5:56
SPEAKER_06: Before people have a medium, they often already have a radar.
6:00
SPEAKER_06: So let's start with a hypothetical scenario.
6:03
SPEAKER_06: If 10 or 12-year-old Patty met 10 or 12-year-old Ross, what do you think would have happened?
6:10
SPEAKER_06: Would you have recognized each other as allies?
6:13
SPEAKER_06: Or would you have both required a long period of cautious observation?
6:17
SPEAKER_03: I didn't really talk at 12.
6:20
SPEAKER_03: No, I I think I was shy.
6:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was afraid of people and and didn't like them all that much.
6:26
SPEAKER_03: So I kind of And yet I had a lot of friends.
6:29
SPEAKER_03: It's a kind of a conundrum.
6:32
SPEAKER_02: You had friends.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: I I I just uh mainly stayed in the apartment.
6:36
SPEAKER_03: Um I no, I I I went outside because I was pushed.
6:42
SPEAKER_03: I went to school because of my job.
6:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:45
SPEAKER_03: Uh I don't that's an interesting question.
6:47
SPEAKER_03: I have no idea.
6:48
SPEAKER_03: I wish we could.
6:49
SPEAKER_03: Can we time travel in this interview?
6:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think it's possible that I think we would have.
6:54
SPEAKER_03: We we would have liked each other if we were locked in a room together.
6:58
SPEAKER_03: We would have liked each other a lot.
7:00
SPEAKER_02: And and hopefully, depending on the day, I'm I'm hoping that because I can think back and think of when people said hi and I just basically ran away.
7:10
SPEAKER_02: You know, for like no reason.
7:11
SPEAKER_03: I would only do it by grade.
7:13
SPEAKER_03: Ten, you're in fourth grade.
7:15
SPEAKER_06: Uh-huh.
7:16
SPEAKER_06: Did you say?
7:17
SPEAKER_03: No, twelve is sixth grade.
7:19
SPEAKER_02: Twelve is sixth grade.
7:20
SPEAKER_02: Or ninth grade.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: Depending on if you're because you're a genius, yeah.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: No, because my parents pushed me through school.
7:27
SPEAKER_02: So, yes, that was really fun.
7:28
SPEAKER_06: You graduated really early.
7:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:30
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
7:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:31
SPEAKER_06: She's still in high school.
7:32
SPEAKER_06: See, that's true.
7:33
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I am you graduated.
7:34
SPEAKER_03: I am.
7:35
SPEAKER_06: That's one of your like one of your recurring dreams, I think.
7:39
SPEAKER_06: You have to go back to high school.
7:41
SPEAKER_06: School.
7:41
SPEAKER_06: Oh, yeah.
7:41
SPEAKER_06: Do you do have that?
7:42
SPEAKER_06: I have that.
7:43
SPEAKER_06: It's so odd.
7:44
SPEAKER_06: Like I've been in the dream.
7:46
SPEAKER_06: I know I've been through graduate school, everything, but high school, still months left.
7:51
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, why is that?
7:52
SPEAKER_06: There's a month left.
7:52
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
7:53
SPEAKER_06: And I just can't do it anymore.
7:54
SPEAKER_06: I died.
7:55
SPEAKER_06: I can't.
7:56
SPEAKER_02: But a lot of times I have that dream, and then most of the time I have a realization in the dream that wait a minute, I'm like this age.
8:05
SPEAKER_02: I've gone through high school.
8:07
SPEAKER_02: I graduated.
8:08
SPEAKER_02: This is a dream, blah.
8:09
SPEAKER_02: And you would think that the brain would sort of remember that, so I would never have the dream again.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: Right.
8:15
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's why you didn't graduate.
8:16
SPEAKER_02: Oh, contra.
8:18
SPEAKER_02: You know, I apparently I'm gonna have- You're not a learner.
8:22
SPEAKER_06: I'm not a learner.
8:23
SPEAKER_06: Not a learner.
8:24
SPEAKER_06: You have unfinished business in high school.
8:26
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm I definitely do.
8:27
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
8:28
SPEAKER_02: You know.
8:29
SPEAKER_06: That's what that means.
8:30
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
8:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:30
SPEAKER_06: So, Roz, given that you were terrified of most things, including other children, and Patty, you said you were actually shy, which I find hard to believe now.
8:39
SPEAKER_03: I wasn't so shy as much as maybe I had nothing to say.
8:43
SPEAKER_03: Aloof.
8:44
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
8:45
SPEAKER_03: You know, a friend of mine, Cynthia Klain, interviewed my mother for some reason about me, and she said she must have had a personality because she had a lot of friends.
8:58
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
8:59
SPEAKER_06: I'm sure you didn't.
9:00
SPEAKER_06: A long time ago.
9:01
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
9:01
SPEAKER_06: So if somehow you have had gotten past all these things, do you think you'd have made something together?
9:07
SPEAKER_06: Magazine, you know, complaint, secret club.
9:11
SPEAKER_03: Well, we might have, because you were always did art from a young age.
9:14
SPEAKER_03: I I did art a little too.
9:17
SPEAKER_03: But my father owned the best job in the world for I mean, for a father, a stationary supply store.
9:25
SPEAKER_03: So we had tons of stuff.
9:27
SPEAKER_03: So you could come over.
9:29
SPEAKER_03: We would have everything.
9:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
9:32
SPEAKER_03: We had gold stars in your house?
9:35
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
9:36
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think Oh, I would have come over.
9:38
SPEAKER_03: Oh, you would have loved it.
9:39
SPEAKER_03: I mean, we had like, we even had like like certificates where you can give out prizes.
9:47
SPEAKER_03: We had we had magic markers, we had the things you punch tolls with, we had everybody.
9:55
SPEAKER_02: I love those little metal stars.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: You can always get a good grade.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: Obsessed with stickers.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: Or uh silver, gold, green, blue, and red.
10:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and they were just so beautiful.
10:08
SPEAKER_03: As you know, my mother once said, Have you ever used a pencil twice?
10:13
SPEAKER_06: That's amazing.
10:15
SPEAKER_06: Also, um, stationary and supplies, it smells so good.
10:18
SPEAKER_06: Smells so good.
10:19
SPEAKER_03: So good.
10:20
SPEAKER_06: So good.
10:21
SPEAKER_06: That's like a dream.
10:23
SPEAKER_03: It's a good way to make friends.
10:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm sure I just like gave people stuff in.
10:27
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to check out my stationary supplies.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: It's like not my etching.
10:32
SPEAKER_02: Not my etching.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: You haven't gotten that far.
10:35
SPEAKER_03: Blue edge.
10:37
SPEAKER_02: That would have totally gotten me to come over.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
10:41
SPEAKER_06: Okay, there we go.
10:42
SPEAKER_06: All right.
10:42
SPEAKER_06: So if you time travel, you could do that.
10:44
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
10:45
SPEAKER_06: So, Ross, you've talked about the miracle finding Mad magazine and Charles Adams and those darker, mischievous jokes that you uh really responded to.
10:55
SPEAKER_06: At that age, did laughter feel more like an escape or like a kind of recognition?
11:00
SPEAKER_02: I think it felt generally kind of like transgressive because my parents were educators, they were teachers, and their sense of humor was very, they told jokes, you know, like Herman goes to the doctor, punchline, you know.
11:19
SPEAKER_02: And they and their friends, that was their sense of humor.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: And Mad Magazine was it made fun of popular culture in a way that I completely responded to.
11:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I really, there was a lot when I was growing up of liking for certain like popular culture things that I just did not understand, that I just didn't get.
11:42
SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, why do you like these shows?
11:45
SPEAKER_02: Why do you like bonanza?
11:46
SPEAKER_02: And why do you like, you know, this?
11:48
SPEAKER_02: I and I still remember that in grade school.
11:50
SPEAKER_02: And then making myself watch bonanza because the other kids were so into bonanza.
11:55
SPEAKER_02: And Mad Magazine was like, hey, guess what?
11:59
SPEAKER_02: Not everybody thinks this stuff is like so gung-ho.
12:03
SPEAKER_02: We're actually making fun of that stuff.
12:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they were making fun of that stuff, and I'd never seen that.
12:07
SPEAKER_02: I'd never seen any place where they made fun of things that were very popular.
12:13
SPEAKER_02: Did your parents approve of your reading that magazine?
12:17
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what they thought of it.
12:18
SPEAKER_02: I did not subscribe.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: I my cousin Gary had a huge collection of them, and I would borrow like stacks of them at a time.
12:26
SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, my parents were against uh comic books, so I would borrow them from somebody else.
12:32
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
12:33
SPEAKER_03: My parents weren't against anything.
12:34
SPEAKER_02: My my mother used to brag about how if she went into the lunchroom of uh the school where she was assistant principal and she saw kids reading a comic book, she would take away the comic book and she'd tear it in half because she thought it was crap.
12:50
SPEAKER_02: The their solution to this was that they bought me classic comics, which was a way of ruining two things at the same time ruin comic books and ruin classic literature.
13:03
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, make it absolutely tedious.
13:06
SPEAKER_03: And usually that's the job of high school to ruin the classic books, right?
13:10
SPEAKER_03: Because your parents were teachers.
13:12
unknown: Yeah, yeah.
13:13
SPEAKER_03: My father was and mother, really, they were proudly against censorship.
13:18
SPEAKER_03: So my father would give me very inappropriate books and take me to inappropriate movies.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: That's funny.
13:24
SPEAKER_03: Like the tin drum when I was eight years old, about a stunted boy.
13:30
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
13:31
SPEAKER_03: And as told from a psychiatrist.
13:33
SPEAKER_03: But the thing about for me, maybe, maybe it's because I'm stupid, or just being a kid, you absorb what you want to absorb, and then the the rest goes above you.
13:44
SPEAKER_03: I wasn't like traumatized by things that if I knew better, right?
13:49
SPEAKER_03: I might have been.
13:50
SPEAKER_03: But it's like, oh, this is fun about a short child.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: This is true.
13:56
SPEAKER_02: That's true.
13:57
SPEAKER_02: That's like, you know, the Warner Brothers cartoons that we grew up on.
14:00
SPEAKER_02: They they all of those they had sort of subtexts that we just did never pick up on.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: Right.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: And they made fun of like movie stars that had Clark Gable, who was Clark Gable to me when I was, you know, eight or nine years old, or six, you know, because that was probably close, or like all those really old uh ones that had the black and white cartoons that had the uh you know St.
14:24
SPEAKER_02: James Infirmary and those wonderful Max Fleischer, or Betty Boop.
14:29
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Betty Boop was a call girl.
14:32
SPEAKER_02: She was, you know, a party girl.
14:35
SPEAKER_03: I think really great stuff can be appreciated on every level.
14:40
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
14:40
SPEAKER_03: You can, I mean, sometimes I'll I can't really do poetry, but I can do it this much.
14:46
SPEAKER_03: I go, I have no idea what this is about, but I know it's really true.
14:51
SPEAKER_06: It just sounds really good, especially with poetry.
14:54
SPEAKER_06: You can tell.
14:54
SPEAKER_03: I mean I read To Gill Muggenberg.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: I remember thinking, I don't know what rape is, it's not gonna be that important.
15:02
SPEAKER_03: Just keep keep on going.
15:03
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
15:04
SPEAKER_03: It's like I just didn't get things.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: That was the first grown-up book I read, and I was nine, and I was completely, I did not know what rape was.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: I was completely bored by all of the courtroom stuff.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to read about Scout and Tim.
15:19
SPEAKER_02: And then there was the little boy who lived next door.
15:21
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, Boo?
15:22
SPEAKER_02: No, that was Boo Radley.
15:23
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, Boo Radley.
15:24
SPEAKER_02: But there was another, there was a I don't know.
15:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but that's that's maybe some of those people out there.
15:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but it's so funny because I mean the courtroom was like that was the the heart of the book, and it was like I mostly what I liked around that age was dirty words.
15:41
SPEAKER_03: Dirty words.
15:42
SPEAKER_03: I, you know, I look through every book and just get to the dirty word.
15:46
SPEAKER_02: Did it bother you when you read it?
15:49
SPEAKER_02: I remember taking out the book, and they had in the the young adult section, it was a book written by Leonard Cohen called The Favorite Game, which I didn't understand, but I saw the word fuck written out.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't even with a star or anything.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: And I remember feeling sort of, I must have been about 10 or 11 or something, and it was disturbing.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: But not, you know, not now.
16:12
SPEAKER_02: I'm like more of a potty master.
16:14
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna make you love it.
16:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love it.
16:16
SPEAKER_02: I like circled it, then you looked it up in the dictionary.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
16:21
SPEAKER_02: I'm totally being friends with you.
16:23
SPEAKER_02: You'll get me over that.
16:24
SPEAKER_06: So back to Killing.
16:26
SPEAKER_06: Um, I had a big crush on Attica's bench.
16:28
SPEAKER_06: Who didn't we?
16:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, plus those glasses.
16:31
SPEAKER_02: Good luck with that.
16:32
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
16:33
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's that's not possible.
16:36
SPEAKER_06: But so given what all everything that you just said, Patty, do you feel like you were just collecting material when you were a kid until you found the right outlet for it?
16:47
SPEAKER_03: Maybe I was subconsciously.
16:49
SPEAKER_03: I am the only person I know who thought I, you know, unlike Roz, who couldn't wait to be an adult, I just thought, being a kid is the best deal in the whole world.
17:02
SPEAKER_03: Why would I ever want to grow up?
17:04
SPEAKER_03: It's like you got a birthday party, don't worry about the logistics.
17:07
SPEAKER_03: Your mother will take you.
17:09
SPEAKER_03: And you thought this was a kid.
17:10
SPEAKER_03: I d I people go, what do you want to be when you grow up?
17:12
SPEAKER_03: Uh I mean, for a little while and be a Tilly's picture.
17:16
SPEAKER_03: But I just thought this is not gonna be an issue for me.
17:19
SPEAKER_03: That's so interesting.
17:21
SPEAKER_03: The influence of that, the the tenure, you know, uh whatever that book is my father made me read.
17:28
SPEAKER_06: So that's actually connected to what I was going to say.
17:31
SPEAKER_06: So I, Raz, you've said that you hated being a child, you couldn't wait to grow up.
17:36
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
17:36
SPEAKER_06: And I find that really fascinating because as a child, I didn't think about adulthood at all.
17:42
SPEAKER_06: It was like another dimension.
17:44
SPEAKER_06: And I'm it's still kind of like, you know, yeah, like what the hell?
17:48
SPEAKER_06: So um, did you actually picture yourself as a grown-up or growing up was more like an exit sign?
17:56
SPEAKER_06: Like, I don't know what's on the other side of the door, but I kind of wanted exit sign.
18:01
SPEAKER_02: And uh I knew I had to get out of my apartment, I had to get out of going to my, you know, school, I had to get out of like having to do trigonometry homework.
18:14
SPEAKER_02: I just had to get out of that world.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: And I didn't care about the logistics or any of that stuff.
18:20
SPEAKER_02: Also earning my own money.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: That was because my parents were so, especially my mother, she was so strict and she was so tight with money.
18:27
SPEAKER_02: And I never got to pick anything I wanted.
18:30
SPEAKER_02: I hated my room, I hated my clothes, I just hated everything.
18:34
SPEAKER_02: I just hated my life.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: I hate it was the only thing for me that I liked was drawing.
18:40
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was really it was so kind of weird.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: Just like happy when I was a kid.
18:45
SPEAKER_02: No, you shouldn't.
18:46
SPEAKER_03: I think I feel bad about like having this.
18:49
SPEAKER_03: But I will say that when I was in around ninth or tenth grade, I learned the word bourgeois.
18:56
SPEAKER_03: And boy, did I throw it around my parents.
18:59
SPEAKER_03: That is so good.
19:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, do your homework.
19:02
SPEAKER_03: It's a bourgeois.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: That's so funny.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
19:06
SPEAKER_06: I can totally see that.
19:07
SPEAKER_06: Oh, bourgeois.
19:08
SPEAKER_03: Everything was like, Yeah, you know, get in the car.
19:10
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god, that's a bourgeois.
19:12
SPEAKER_06: I mean, French words have that, you know, you just throw them around.
19:16
SPEAKER_06: So, Patty, you wrote for Rugrats, and I was a big fan of that show.
19:22
SPEAKER_06: And I found out while prepping for this interview that you wrote an episode called What the Big People Do.
19:28
SPEAKER_06: I hope the internet is correct.
19:30
SPEAKER_03: I did, I did write that.
19:31
SPEAKER_03: It's not as if I wrote millions the way you posed that question.
19:35
SPEAKER_03: I think I wrote two or three.
19:36
SPEAKER_06: Okay, well, and that was one of them.
19:38
SPEAKER_03: That was definitely one of them.
19:39
SPEAKER_03: And it was it was kind of apropos to what we're talking about.
19:42
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
19:42
SPEAKER_03: Because adults were like a mystery.
19:44
SPEAKER_05: Right.
19:44
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I did think as a kid, all right, I don't want to grow up, but one day I will wake up and I will have a mother hairdo and three children.
19:56
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and that's it.
19:57
SPEAKER_06: Like from now to it.
19:59
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
20:00
SPEAKER_06: Just have no kids.
20:01
SPEAKER_06: That's so funny because so that episode the the kids imagined themselves as grown-ups, and I remember watching that and being like semi-spooked because they were these like wobbly baby adults, yeah, like adult body with like a baby face, and they moved kind of awkwardly.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:21
SPEAKER_06: And they're they think they are imagining freedom as you know, but they really find themselves kind of in a nightmare in the end.
20:28
SPEAKER_03: If you think I remember the I do remember the elementary.
20:31
SPEAKER_03: Do you remember they're going to work?
20:33
SPEAKER_03: Because, like, what's work?
20:35
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
20:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
20:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
20:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
20:36
SPEAKER_06: Do you remember what interested you in that reversal?
20:40
SPEAKER_03: Oh god, no.
20:42
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it it is interesting.
20:44
SPEAKER_03: I mean, when you think about it, and they were supposed to be very young kids, even though they talked and act that young, but they were like toddlers, and you would have no sense of the world.
20:57
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it it it's a kid is an anthropologist, right?
21:02
SPEAKER_03: And they piece together things they see, and they reach the wrong conclusions.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: I definitely felt like an anthropologist growing up, um, especially with other children.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:16
SPEAKER_02: You know, just trying to figure out, I didn't know what people how people felt.
21:22
SPEAKER_02: I was an only child, yeah.
21:23
SPEAKER_02: Only child and left alone, probably more than I should have been left alone.
21:29
SPEAKER_03: You didn't even like take a school bus, right?
21:31
SPEAKER_02: No, no.
21:32
SPEAKER_02: My grade school, I walked to school, and my mother was probably some misplaced guilt because she, you know, went to her job, my father went to his job.
21:43
SPEAKER_02: They had people come who took care of me, um, and they would walk me to school.
21:47
SPEAKER_02: These people didn't often didn't speak English.
21:50
SPEAKER_02: So I had really a very limited idea.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know how children were in the world.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: You were luckily so unbourgeois.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: I was no, I was not.
21:58
SPEAKER_02: I was, as far as I knew, I was.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: Not bourgeois, but maybe I was bourgeois and I didn't know it.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
22:04
SPEAKER_02: You know, secret bourgeois.
22:08
SPEAKER_03: Latent bourgeois.
22:10
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, exactly.
22:11
SPEAKER_06: Okay, so now it feels natural to move from the children that you were to the children that you've invented together.
22:17
SPEAKER_06: Meet my staff, your first book collaboration as a writer, illustrator, pair, just the two of you, published in 1998, presents Walter, a boy who takes the idea of the imaginary friend to an extreme.
22:30
SPEAKER_06: So he doesn't just invent a companion, he invents a whole cast of very theatrical characters to manage, I think, the clash between what he wants and the reality of being a child.
22:42
SPEAKER_06: Patty, was a comedy for you in the fantasy of control or in the fact that even the fantasy becomes its own little uh bureaucracy?
22:51
SPEAKER_03: Let me not answer the question for a second.
22:53
SPEAKER_03: Um, the way Raz and I love working with each other.
22:57
SPEAKER_03: We never had one fight.
22:59
SPEAKER_03: I kind of have a good eye for a writer, and Roz is a writer for an artist.
23:04
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
23:04
SPEAKER_03: So usually I come up with the idea, come up with a rough draft, she improves it, she does uh illustrations, I suggest, and and it it all works.
23:15
SPEAKER_03: The idea came to me for two reasons.
23:18
SPEAKER_03: One is I read a wonderful book decades earlier called The Emperor about Haile Selassie by a Polish journalist whose name I can't remember, but it's Richard Kapacapada.
23:34
SPEAKER_03: And I was fascinated because he was an emperor and a tyrant, and he had a person to do everything, including he was very short, so he had a pillow bearer that walked around with him and just discreetly put a pillow underneath his feet so they wouldn't dangle.
23:54
SPEAKER_03: So, and that was like a detail I never forgot.
23:58
SPEAKER_03: I actually have it on my Kindle, and I'm gonna read it again and see if there's another idea.
24:02
SPEAKER_03: And the other thing is I I don't have pairs of steers, so I used to wear clip-on earrings until a friend of mine told me I looked like an anchor woman.
24:10
SPEAKER_03: So that ended that.
24:11
SPEAKER_03: But when I did, they're always falling off and losing them.
24:15
SPEAKER_03: And I thought, I need someone that just follows me around.
24:20
SPEAKER_03: Sole job is to collect the earrings, and then it's such a kid thing, but also such an everybody thing.
24:29
SPEAKER_03: Like, I need someone just to do that little thing.
24:33
SPEAKER_03: So that's yeah, the genesis of our book.
24:36
SPEAKER_03: So and I forget what even the question I didn't answer was.
24:39
SPEAKER_06: I think you did answer.
24:40
SPEAKER_03: I did, it was a fantasy.
24:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a fantasy.
24:42
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so the collaborative process is very much back and forth.
24:45
SPEAKER_06: It's not like you receive a manuscript, but first comes the printed text.
24:51
SPEAKER_06: Uh Patty usually comes up with the idea, yeah.
24:54
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes Roz likes it, sometimes I don't.
24:57
SPEAKER_03: And then I'll come up with a rough, rough draft.
25:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:01
SPEAKER_03: And then we ping pong.
25:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, start.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
25:04
SPEAKER_02: We ping-pong it, and there's like preliminary sketches, and sometimes you you know make a decision you don't like this, and try it this way, and you know, so and then at the very end, an editor sometimes says some things.
25:16
SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking of the tell that naked Nelly.
25:19
SPEAKER_03: Naked Nancy.
25:19
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
25:20
SPEAKER_06: I loved Naked Nancy.
25:22
SPEAKER_06: Oh, you loved it.
25:23
SPEAKER_06: Like you almost didn't get to meet Naked Naked Nancy.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: Set it up so what people know what when we were and um entire town, there yeah, the when okay.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: Can you show it?
25:36
SPEAKER_02: I mean, can you show the naked?
25:37
SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes, yes, I will.
25:38
SPEAKER_03: It it will make more sense.
25:40
SPEAKER_03: It's about a little girl who doesn't want to go to sleep.
25:43
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
25:44
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's my next um cluster, but I did love naked Nancy.
25:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we both have like, oh, here she is.
25:49
SPEAKER_02: Here's Naked.
25:50
SPEAKER_02: Should I just hold this up?
25:51
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so here's Naked Nancy.
25:53
SPEAKER_02: And these are this isn't like an activity that she's gonna do instead of going to sleep.
25:57
SPEAKER_02: And uh it says, uh-oh, what if naked Nancy needs to go, you know what, in the middle of the night?
26:02
SPEAKER_02: A walkway from the bed to the bathroom is a must-have.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: So naked Nancy, she's like walking on this.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: An editor said to me, you know, there might be some people who find this offensive because she's not wearing any clothes.
26:17
SPEAKER_03: Because they've never they've never not had clothes on.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: If you can see from the drawing, first of all, it's a doll.
26:26
SPEAKER_02: It's not an anatomically correct, expensive doll.
26:29
SPEAKER_02: Just a poor porno Peggy.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just a stupid plastic doll.
26:35
SPEAKER_02: We all know what that's what girls do.
26:38
SPEAKER_02: That's what girls do.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: They take the they clip off the hair, they take off the clothes.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: Um, and uh I I just thought, like, who are these imaginary people?
26:49
SPEAKER_02: Like, if that's like nutty.
26:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's not like oversensitivity, that's like a nutty thing to be offended by something of that.
26:59
SPEAKER_02: And so I I kind of said, I I really don't want to put this is she suggested I put a nightgown on her.
27:07
SPEAKER_02: And I just said, I don't think so.
27:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean, also it ruins the joke.
27:11
SPEAKER_02: Totally ruins the joke.
27:12
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so you know, what's the point of that?
27:14
SPEAKER_06: Roz, did your children ever read your children's books as children?
27:18
SPEAKER_02: Um that's a good question.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: I think that they were a little bit older by that time.
27:28
SPEAKER_06: I thought that at least this one would coincide me and my sex.
27:31
SPEAKER_02: No, well, the first one was the first one was it?
27:34
SPEAKER_02: Now everybody really hates me.
27:36
SPEAKER_02: And that was before I had kids.
27:38
SPEAKER_03: That's right.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: Oh, so it was like you were pregnant with Ian?
27:42
SPEAKER_03: No.
27:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because this was wait, this was 1993.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: So, no, no, this was not before I had kids.
27:49
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Ian would have been six by this time.
27:54
SPEAKER_02: You kept it from them.
27:56
SPEAKER_03: Because there's somebody naked in it.
27:58
SPEAKER_02: It's a terrible thing, but I actually don't remember.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: You don't remember.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: I don't remember.
28:02
SPEAKER_02: I think this is more like a four or a five-year-old.
28:07
SPEAKER_02: I think by six, he was starting to read goosebumps and stuff like that.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: So that's pretty much how he learned.
28:14
SPEAKER_06: I'm trying to be at R.L.
28:15
SPEAKER_06: Stein on the podcast.
28:16
SPEAKER_06: We're very good friends with that.
28:17
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, we're friends with him.
28:18
SPEAKER_06: Mark Brown, who was on the podcast.
28:20
SPEAKER_03: We can easily do that.
28:21
SPEAKER_06: Oh my god, yeah.
28:22
SPEAKER_06: I I was a good one.
28:23
SPEAKER_06: Easily Columbia.
28:26
SPEAKER_03: So back the only thing I know how to do.
28:28
SPEAKER_06: You connect people, yeah.
28:30
SPEAKER_06: I've heard.
28:30
SPEAKER_06: So back to Tired Town, um, your most recent collaboration published in 2023.
28:37
SPEAKER_06: The protagonist, Nellie B.
28:39
SPEAKER_06: Knightley, seems like a small bedtime tyrant, as you mentioned, like the child that will not go down.
28:46
SPEAKER_06: And if you look at her visually, she looks a little bit wild and unhinged.
28:52
unknown: Yes.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: She's just very excited about being herself and being alive and doing stuff.
28:57
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
28:58
SPEAKER_06: So the the book is um a portrait, really vivid portrait of childhood imagination.
29:05
SPEAKER_06: Um, Ross, throughout these books, you've you're illustrating children that are very much the opposite of how you have described yourself as a child.
29:14
SPEAKER_06: There's a fearlessness, conviction, a lack of visible worry.
29:19
SPEAKER_06: When you draw a character like Nellie, do you feel like you're channeling a version of yourself that never got to be, or is it something else?
29:26
SPEAKER_02: I I don't know, maybe a little bit of both.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: Um I I mean it's definitely.
29:31
SPEAKER_02: I think if I drew a book about like what I was like as a kid, it would be a very boring, boring, depressing book.
29:39
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I I like drawing kids who have a certain amount of self-confidence and autonomy, and um their parents are you know, well, what shall we do?
29:52
SPEAKER_02: She doesn't want to go to not like this time.
29:58
SPEAKER_02: Right.
29:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:00
SPEAKER_06: Who wants that?
30:01
SPEAKER_06: Nobody.
30:01
SPEAKER_06: Nobody.
30:02
SPEAKER_06: No.
30:02
SPEAKER_06: So Patty, a lot of children's books are seem to be designed to civilize a child.
30:07
SPEAKER_06: Yours feel more interested in documenting the child's case against civilization or against the world becoming a lesser place.
30:16
SPEAKER_06: Does that feel fair or is there another way to look at it?
30:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
30:20
SPEAKER_03: Our first book, Now Everybody Really Hates Me.
30:23
SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, we had issues with that.
30:25
SPEAKER_03: Favorite, favorite review I've ever gotten.
30:28
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
30:29
SPEAKER_03: Do you remember this?
30:29
SPEAKER_03: In Newsweek, it was this book has no moral, no message, no meaning.
30:34
unknown: Yes.
30:34
SPEAKER_03: And I think that would say it like an insult.
30:37
SPEAKER_03: I think they meant I did, but they meant it as a compliment.
30:40
SPEAKER_03: You think?
30:40
SPEAKER_03: We no, I know because we got we got all the stories you can get.
30:44
SPEAKER_03: Oh no, it was it was a it was good.
30:46
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they they wouldn't have put a first book in the magazine.
30:50
SPEAKER_03: No, it was a good one.
30:52
SPEAKER_03: I was a goody goody, but I was the person who sat in the back room making fun of the teacher, but secretly did the extra credit homework at night.
31:06
SPEAKER_03: I had it both ways.
31:09
SPEAKER_02: And I had it neither way.
31:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, which is so I was impetuous if it didn't, as long as you gave me an A.
31:18
SPEAKER_03: And I had no bedtime.
31:21
SPEAKER_06: Oh, you didn't?
31:21
SPEAKER_03: I have any bedtime, and and you'd think I would be kind of, then it wouldn't be an issue.
31:27
SPEAKER_03: But I remember people would say, What's your favorite TV show?
31:30
SPEAKER_03: And I go, The late, late, late, late, late show.
31:33
SPEAKER_03: And Raz and I still don't go to sleep.
31:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we are later late people.
31:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
31:39
SPEAKER_03: Well, the 10 a.m.
31:40
SPEAKER_03: What's your bedtime?
31:41
SPEAKER_03: I'd say three-ish, but Wow.
31:45
SPEAKER_03: Now that I'm old, I've been I my problem is that I'm I well, I have a lot of problems, but I had this that I thought would never happen to anybody is I have dry eyes around two, and I don't know what to do.
31:59
SPEAKER_03: That hurts a lot.
32:00
SPEAKER_03: I like use my Kindle, but that's not I don't know.
32:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I I would hate always going to sleep, hate always getting up.
32:07
SPEAKER_03: Wouldn't you start to sleep?
32:08
SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes, I hate that also.
32:10
SPEAKER_03: Oh God.
32:10
SPEAKER_06: Both going to sleep and sleep.
32:12
SPEAKER_03: No, I could I could stay up till infinity.
32:17
SPEAKER_03: And and no matter what time I go to sleep, I don't want to get up.
32:20
SPEAKER_03: Doesn't affect it.
32:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Bill my husband is more of a stay up till infinity person.
32:25
SPEAKER_02: I do, I get tired around two or three and usually fall asleep between two and three.
32:31
SPEAKER_02: Um although occasionally, you know, with insomnia, uh that's not gonna happen.
32:35
SPEAKER_03: I don't have insomnia.
32:37
SPEAKER_02: I mean, because they stay up so late.
32:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:39
SPEAKER_02: Oh, sometimes you pass the point though.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: Uh where you just like it's like, what's sleep?
32:44
SPEAKER_02: I don't even remember what that is.
32:45
SPEAKER_03: And the only way it's gonna be.
32:46
SPEAKER_03: I get up is guilt.
32:48
unknown: Guilt.
32:48
SPEAKER_02: Guilt me up.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, I have birds, so I have to get up.
32:53
SPEAKER_02: But but I've we've trained them to be a little bit on the I thought you have two birds, I have two birds, yes.
32:57
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
32:58
SPEAKER_06: I know Jackie from the internet.
33:00
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
33:01
SPEAKER_06: Very cute.
33:01
SPEAKER_03: Very Jackie's very cute.
33:02
SPEAKER_06: Very cute.
33:03
SPEAKER_06: I love the colors.
33:04
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
33:05
SPEAKER_03: Does any birds have bad colors except pigeons?
33:08
SPEAKER_02: Well, the other one that's oh I think they have beautiful colors.
33:10
SPEAKER_03: Well, I know, but you know what I mean.
33:11
SPEAKER_03: Not like white.
33:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, African gray.
33:14
SPEAKER_02: There are shades of gray, and then that red tail.
33:17
SPEAKER_02: That's my other one.
33:18
SPEAKER_06: So back to Tire Town for a second, Raz.
33:20
SPEAKER_06: In Tire town, the spaghetti is exhausted.
33:23
SPEAKER_06: Yes, the buildings yawn, the room is alive.
33:27
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
33:27
SPEAKER_06: The boundary between Nellie's mind and the physical world is completely flexible.
33:34
SPEAKER_06: And you do this in so much of your work.
33:36
SPEAKER_06: As a cartoonist, do you think it's important to cultivate that kind of flexibility in your brain, or is it just the way you look at the world?
33:44
SPEAKER_02: I think it's more what I how I look at the world and what I like to draw.
33:49
SPEAKER_02: I mean, everybody who draws, they have to follow the thread that's, you know, their thread.
33:59
SPEAKER_02: So that's all I'm I'm doing.
34:03
SPEAKER_06: Uh so moving on to your adult book collaborations.
34:06
SPEAKER_06: Why don't you write my eulogy so now so I can correct it?
34:10
SPEAKER_06: Published in 2019, and You Can Only Yell at Me for One Thing at a Time, published 2020.
34:16
SPEAKER_06: These are both great titles.
34:18
SPEAKER_06: One is a question that is really a command, and the other is a statement that is really a rule.
34:24
SPEAKER_06: Um, both present a person negotiating with another, and they keep exploring the same question you've been circling, uh, which is the annoying and often funny push and pull between self and others.
34:38
SPEAKER_06: Why don't you write my eulogy as an archive of Patty's mother's actual sayings and commandments expanded visually by Ross.
34:47
SPEAKER_06: Patty, how curated is the book?
34:49
SPEAKER_06: Is there a longer list somewhere?
34:51
SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, my mother said a lot of things, and now I kind of forget them.
34:54
SPEAKER_03: I looked at it recently because I knew you were gonna ask us about it, and I thought, well, I'm glad I wrote this down because I I forget.
35:02
SPEAKER_03: Um, I will say, well, push and pull of other people.
35:06
SPEAKER_03: That's true.
35:07
SPEAKER_03: It's always kind of stop it.
35:09
SPEAKER_03: You know, you're all there's always somebody.
35:12
SPEAKER_03: But the great thing about those people is doing what we do, we'll just make fun of them.
35:18
SPEAKER_03: I once, my mother had shingles and she was old.
35:22
SPEAKER_03: And I went home to quote help her.
35:26
SPEAKER_03: And at one point she said, Could you get me a glass of water?
35:29
SPEAKER_03: I go, really dramatic.
35:34
SPEAKER_03: And I gave her the water and I said, You better get better soon because you've got to figure out how you're gonna thank me.
35:41
SPEAKER_03: And she said, I am the butt of all your jokes.
35:46
SPEAKER_03: Is that not enough?
35:49
SPEAKER_03: Well, good point.
35:50
SPEAKER_06: That's an excellent point.
35:51
SPEAKER_06: It is an excellent point.
35:53
SPEAKER_03: But the problem, I don't know if you find this, with using other people like your mother, who didn't, you know, you can do use her as much as you want.
36:02
SPEAKER_03: Is I well people go, your mother's so funny.
36:06
SPEAKER_03: And I go, I'm making her a little funnier.
36:09
SPEAKER_03: I edited this.
36:11
SPEAKER_03: And then you kind of think that undermines everything.
36:14
SPEAKER_03: So is that kind of do I want the credit or do I want to be it to be exposed that this is not true what I said?
36:26
SPEAKER_03: I want my mother said to my niece, I will take you, Patty and I will take you to Paris when you're seven or something.
36:33
SPEAKER_03: And we did, and we had a great time.
36:35
SPEAKER_03: And my niece was then still is pretty funny.
36:39
SPEAKER_03: And so I wrote when I came back, I wrote supposedly her journal that she kept.
36:46
SPEAKER_03: And it got published in the Times.
36:49
SPEAKER_03: Okay, maybe she said some of this stuff.
36:52
SPEAKER_03: It wasn't her journal.
36:53
SPEAKER_03: Because your niece is so funny, and then I had to go but but but but it is good to have people in your life that you know give you material for sure.
37:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is good.
37:08
SPEAKER_06: Did your mom know she was funny?
37:11
SPEAKER_03: My mother got funny late in life.
37:13
SPEAKER_03: My father was genuinely funny, my mother was funny as a character.
37:19
SPEAKER_03: I I don't know.
37:20
SPEAKER_03: I think she yeah, I think she did.
37:22
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
37:23
SPEAKER_03: I think she did.
37:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
37:25
SPEAKER_03: I mean, your parents were so reverent because they were teachers.
37:29
SPEAKER_03: My parents were pretty irreverent.
37:32
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they weren't wise guys, but nothing was, you know, I never know if you go above or below being made fun of.
37:42
SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, it was we made fun of things.
37:47
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
37:48
SPEAKER_06: So, Roz, your mom was also, by all accounts, a tough cookie.
37:52
SPEAKER_06: Did you feel that there was any wisdom overlap between her and Patty's mother, or we was she a totally different kind of tough?
38:00
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
38:02
SPEAKER_03: I I think well do you think that they would have they they both were not hikers, let's say.
38:08
SPEAKER_03: No, no, they were not hikers.
38:10
SPEAKER_03: They weren't uh they were um I think they both believed in rules that they made up and that we should follow.
38:20
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they were, I I think I said it in that book, absolutists.
38:24
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
38:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:24
SPEAKER_03: I mean, my mother believed there's a right and there's a wrong, which is a somewhat good way to be brought up, but mostly bad, because there are a lot of things I think, ooh, if I pick the wrong fabric, it's a big mistake.
38:41
SPEAKER_03: You know, you think things that most people think there is not a right and wrong about, yeah, I think there's a right and wrong about it, and it can be paralyzing and it can be what if I get it wrong.
38:53
SPEAKER_03: Right.
38:53
SPEAKER_03: Uh but I don't know if your mother was really like different interests.
38:57
SPEAKER_02: I mean, my my parents would, my mother would not have cared at all about the fabric thing.
39:02
SPEAKER_02: My mother was shallow.
39:03
SPEAKER_02: No, no, that's not a s you know, I don't think that caring about clothes is shallow.
39:08
SPEAKER_02: It was just something that um or not caring about them is deep.
39:14
SPEAKER_02: I just I just think that it was something that was not.
39:17
SPEAKER_02: My mother, there were things that were good about my mother, and one of them was that I think that she uh you know, good and bad in a way, she never um imparted to me the information that as a woman or as a girl it was important to be pretty, you know, or to dress well, or to attract attention to yourself for being to that exactly.
39:48
SPEAKER_02: That's good.
39:49
SPEAKER_02: You know, well that's that's I mean, that's an exaggeration, but I sex didn't exist in my thoughts.
39:53
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
40:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, I was brought up as I think sort of somewhat genderless, that like whether I was female or male didn't matter.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: Like the point was to sort of you know do well in school and find out what you love to do.
40:18
SPEAKER_02: And uh don't, you know, don't pay too much attention to people who are jerks or whatever.
40:27
SPEAKER_02: But um, and they my parents were very interested in music and the theater and stuff like that.
40:33
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, don't be like uh a you know, relative ex who like you know, my my uncle John was like, you know, they the fact that he had to get a new car every year was just like they just thought that was the stupidest thing ever.
40:50
SPEAKER_02: Or people who made their house like too fancy, they just kind of and they had no books.
40:55
SPEAKER_03: Too showy, but both our parents, to their credit, uh because they they loved these things, exposed us to art and music and books.
41:06
SPEAKER_03: I mean, yes, we I went to the library with my father three times a week.
41:12
SPEAKER_03: He took me to the bookstore to buy a book once a week.
41:15
SPEAKER_03: We went to art museums.
41:16
SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, my parents didn't do that.
41:19
SPEAKER_03: And that made a difference.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: Did make a big difference that that was important.
41:23
SPEAKER_02: And they believed that school was important.
41:25
SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's it's I had cousins whose parents didn't feel that way, and it wasn't it didn't do them any favors.
41:34
SPEAKER_02: Right.
41:35
SPEAKER_03: You know?
41:35
SPEAKER_03: Same.
41:36
SPEAKER_03: You're my going to school for me was that's your job.
41:40
SPEAKER_03: That's your job.
41:41
SPEAKER_03: That's job that's the job of children.
41:43
SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
41:43
SPEAKER_06: Exactly.
41:44
SPEAKER_06: Right.
41:44
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
41:45
SPEAKER_06: All right, let's talk about me for a hot second.
41:47
SPEAKER_06: Please, please, even better.
41:49
SPEAKER_06: This all reminded me that a while ago I did something similar and wrote a list of my mother's witticisms.
41:56
SPEAKER_06: And I managed to actually find it while I was preparing for this interview.
42:01
SPEAKER_06: And I singled out a few phrases that I think you will both appreciate.
42:05
SPEAKER_06: So the originals are in Spanish, um, but I think they translate okay.
42:09
SPEAKER_06: So number one, maybe I'll say it in Spanish first.
42:15
SPEAKER_06: Wait, we're gonna we're gonna guess.
42:17
SPEAKER_06: Say it again.
42:26
SPEAKER_02: A burro, a donkey in an airplane.
42:30
SPEAKER_02: Okay, you got it.
42:30
SPEAKER_02: Most of it.
42:31
SPEAKER_02: So it means my crayons are on the donkey in the airplane.
42:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:36
SPEAKER_06: More that person is more full of themselves than a donkey on an airplane.
42:41
SPEAKER_06: Oh, oh my god, you speak Spanish.
42:44
SPEAKER_06: Oh my god.
42:45
SPEAKER_06: How did that happen?
42:46
SPEAKER_03: I say in Russian.
42:48
SPEAKER_06: Let that donkey live its best life, right?
42:50
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
42:51
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, totally.
42:52
SPEAKER_06: Why not?
42:52
SPEAKER_06: Go on that airplane.
42:54
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's good.
42:54
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
42:55
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
42:59
SPEAKER_06: Say that again.
43:01
SPEAKER_06: Okay, la ultima Coca-Cola in el desierto.
43:05
SPEAKER_03: The crazy person who likes Coca-Cola in the limousine.
43:11
SPEAKER_02: Is that it?
43:12
SPEAKER_02: You've got Coca-Cola, right?
43:13
SPEAKER_02: I'm guessing this is the last Coca-Cola in this century.
43:17
SPEAKER_06: Oh my God, that's almost it, but not in this century.
43:21
SPEAKER_06: So they think that they're the last Coca-Cola in the desert.
43:25
SPEAKER_06: That's good.
43:25
SPEAKER_06: That's a good thing.
43:29
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
43:29
SPEAKER_06: That's a good picture.
43:31
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
43:31
SPEAKER_06: Which is a lot of pressure on one.
43:33
SPEAKER_06: Coca-Cola in the desert.
43:34
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
43:34
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
43:34
SPEAKER_06: That's what they think of themselves.
43:36
SPEAKER_03: And then you'll illustrate it with like 10 miles to the lake.
43:41
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yes.
43:42
SPEAKER_06: Or just like some vast desert with like a little bottle of coconut.
43:45
SPEAKER_06: Right.
43:45
SPEAKER_06: But it has to be cold.
43:46
SPEAKER_06: I guess.
43:47
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
43:47
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
43:48
SPEAKER_06: Really?
43:49
SPEAKER_03: Your mother was much much more poetic.
43:52
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
43:53
SPEAKER_02: All right.
43:53
SPEAKER_06: Number three.
43:54
SPEAKER_02: Your mother's pretty poetic.
43:56
SPEAKER_02: She's funny.
43:56
SPEAKER_02: Funny, but not poetic.
43:58
SPEAKER_06: The dientes para You're never gonna guess this.
44:02
SPEAKER_06: Say it again.
44:03
SPEAKER_06: The dientes para afuera.
44:05
SPEAKER_06: The dentist is on fire.
44:09
SPEAKER_06: From the teeth outward.
44:12
SPEAKER_06: Oh my dent.
44:13
SPEAKER_06: Ah, dent, dent.
44:15
SPEAKER_03: You two collaborate.
44:16
SPEAKER_03: You two cheated.
44:22
SPEAKER_06: Someone some stuff was shared and you were not included.
44:26
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
44:27
SPEAKER_06: So that means sincerity stopped at the front teeth, essentially.
44:31
SPEAKER_06: So you mean it like in a word, but when it comes out, it's like none.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: That's good crap.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
44:39
SPEAKER_06: The last one, ninguna perita in dulce.
44:43
SPEAKER_06: Nothing is lost.
44:46
SPEAKER_02: No.
44:47
SPEAKER_06: So this means that person is not a little pear in syrup.
44:51
SPEAKER_06: Which means they are not the innocent little dessert that they make up.
44:56
SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's it.
44:58
SPEAKER_03: Your mother said it's next.
45:00
SPEAKER_03: Wonderful.
45:00
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so they're not exactly commandments in your mother's No, they're more like samplers.
45:06
SPEAKER_03: We'll embroider them.
45:07
SPEAKER_06: Are these like well-known Spanish South American cartoons?
45:11
SPEAKER_06: Like like do people say them or did she make them up?
45:15
SPEAKER_06: So I have not heard a lot of people say them.
45:18
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
45:18
SPEAKER_06: I do know they came from somewhere, probably from her mom.
45:21
SPEAKER_06: And then, you know, they just kind of travel.
45:24
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
45:24
SPEAKER_06: But not a little, not a lot of people like who are younger say them.
45:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:28
SPEAKER_06: Like no one actually.
45:30
SPEAKER_02: Well, my parents spoke Yiddish.
45:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:32
SPEAKER_02: So they had a number of Yiddish sayings, but I I only can remember some of the ones, the translations where they, you know, if my if somebody was, wow, if I had, you know, a million dollars, I would do this.
45:46
SPEAKER_02: And my mother would say, if if I had wheels, if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.
45:52
SPEAKER_02: Which I always I love that expression.
45:54
SPEAKER_02: That's so great.
45:55
SPEAKER_02: But there were others I can't remember now.
45:57
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
45:57
SPEAKER_06: So they're very drawable, right?
45:59
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, very much all right.
46:01
SPEAKER_06: So moving on from that to you can only yell at me for one thing at a time.
46:05
SPEAKER_06: It presents a series of rules, statements, and tips for couples that are funny because they are they turn real interactions into a kind of official rule book for petty arguments.
46:17
SPEAKER_06: So, Patty, were these mostly born from actual couple behavior or from the comic pleasure of giving private arguments a kind of structural?
46:27
SPEAKER_03: The title was something that my then boyfriend said to me.
46:32
SPEAKER_03: And he uh said it, and I just smiled and thought, we've been looking for a title for this, this is it.
46:39
SPEAKER_03: Oh uh yeah, and now I broke up with him.
46:42
SPEAKER_03: We're still great, great friends, but um now I can yell at him from room at a time.
46:48
SPEAKER_03: It's funny.
46:49
SPEAKER_03: Uh and then it was kind of universals.
46:53
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I mean, we believe all of them.
46:56
SPEAKER_02: The yelling from room to room.
46:58
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, that's classic.
46:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's classic.
47:00
SPEAKER_02: I cannot stand that.
47:02
SPEAKER_03: When when and and also You can tell the people what that means.
47:07
unknown: Yeah.
47:09
SPEAKER_02: Hi.
47:10
SPEAKER_02: Um when uh my husband will yell, sometimes he won't even yell, he'll just talk like in a normal tone of voice.
47:17
SPEAKER_02: And and I have sometimes when I'm really mad, I'll like sort of do that back to him.
47:22
SPEAKER_02: I do too.
47:23
SPEAKER_02: You know, I'll just talk in a normal tone of voice.
47:25
SPEAKER_02: So like he can hear me sort of mumbling.
47:28
SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's these are we we call them fights, F-I-T-E-S.
47:32
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
47:33
SPEAKER_02: It's like the the petty arguments, the petty day-to-day things that happen when you're living with another person.
47:41
SPEAKER_02: Um, that I wouldn't call them like an F-I-G-H-T, but that kind of, you know, F-I-T-E.
47:48
SPEAKER_03: My parents had, they thought before you take a long car trip, you should figure out what you're gonna argue about.
47:56
SPEAKER_03: But it drives me crazy when people yell to me in another room.
48:01
SPEAKER_03: So my then boyfriend and I came up, well I came up with it because he didn't really care about this, zones.
48:08
SPEAKER_03: You could you can only talk to somebody in your zone.
48:12
SPEAKER_03: But then we had a million fights about what constitutes a zone.
48:16
SPEAKER_03: Because I said, like, no, the bathroom is its own zone, even though it's near the bedroom.
48:23
SPEAKER_03: It's not, it's not exactly.
48:27
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
48:28
SPEAKER_02: And then there's always the you know, other factors like is the water running?
48:31
SPEAKER_02: Is there a fan on?
48:33
SPEAKER_02: Is there and to ignore these things, it's like and I hate that.
48:40
SPEAKER_02: It's just like what sometimes I just ignore it, you know.
48:44
SPEAKER_02: It's like I will just pretend I didn't hear anything.
48:46
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
48:47
SPEAKER_03: I I do that or I just talk like what I hate the word passive aggressive because it's always aggressive aggressive.
48:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that one really might be passive aggressive.
48:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you just go, yeah.
48:57
SPEAKER_03: I said I don't want to do that like that.
48:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm yeah, I'm going to, I'm going and leaving for stop and shop in about 10 minutes.
49:04
SPEAKER_03: In that case, I think one everything.
49:16
SPEAKER_06: So for some rules, we see a specific human couple, for others, it's birds, robots, or even just objects.
49:23
SPEAKER_06: So what makes you decide this one wants a pair of dinosaurs, this one uh wants actual people, this one is a sign on the road.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: I have to add in.
49:35
SPEAKER_02: I I don't hear two.
49:37
SPEAKER_03: We interviewed some dinosaurs.
49:39
SPEAKER_02: Of course.
49:40
SPEAKER_02: Well, we have our friends.
49:44
SPEAKER_06: So this is a pair of birds.
49:46
SPEAKER_06: Adultery day.
49:47
SPEAKER_06: The first Tuesday of every month, you can pretend to be single once they no questions asked.
49:52
SPEAKER_06: And that's a pair of birds.
49:54
SPEAKER_06: A couple of birds, yeah.
49:55
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, why not?
49:56
SPEAKER_03: Why not?
49:57
SPEAKER_03: I can guess why you did that.
49:59
SPEAKER_02: Well, oh, it would be a big thing.
50:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it would be a little bit icky to kind of make it people.
50:04
SPEAKER_02: It would be a little too much.
50:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
50:07
SPEAKER_06: I think uh honesty is not necessarily the best policy.
50:14
SPEAKER_06: That's classic.
50:15
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
50:15
SPEAKER_03: I have a friend who said to her children, the last thing I want you to tell me is the truth.
50:20
SPEAKER_03: Oh God.
50:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:22
SPEAKER_02: Well, I remember Ian telling me later, like I asked him, about how much of what was going on in high school with you do you think I was aware of?
50:31
SPEAKER_02: And he said, about five percent.
50:33
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
50:34
SPEAKER_02: A little scary.
50:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but you don't want to know.
50:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's he has his own kids now.
50:39
SPEAKER_06: So earphones, which we discussed, a great thing.
50:48
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
50:49
SPEAKER_06: Don't kayak in rough waters with the beneficiary of your life insurance policy.
50:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that never came up for us.
50:55
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
50:57
SPEAKER_06: Um if you are in the middle of an argument and realize after going way out on the limb that you are wrong, do not turn back.
51:07
SPEAKER_06: So much work.
51:08
SPEAKER_03: And can't say, you know what?
51:10
SPEAKER_03: Uh actually, I'd rather that's why I because that's always my impulse.
51:14
SPEAKER_03: I I and I want to agree with them.
51:16
SPEAKER_03: Like if I were a lawyer, I'd go, you know, Judge, the defense has a good point.
51:23
SPEAKER_06: I've changed it to the defense.
51:25
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, wouldn't be good.
51:26
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
51:27
SPEAKER_06: All right, so after seeing your two brains at work in these collaborations, let's separate you for just a moment.
51:34
SPEAKER_06: Ross, you've described anxiety almost as a native language.
51:38
SPEAKER_06: Um, at this point, do you feel like your work is driven by the anxious feelings themselves, or by the way you notice the bizarre and uncomfortable details of everyday life?
51:49
SPEAKER_06: I think it's both.
51:50
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, they kind of feed each other.
51:51
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, definitely.
51:52
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, definitely.
51:54
SPEAKER_06: It's what gives things texture.
51:56
SPEAKER_06: You know.
51:57
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
51:58
SPEAKER_06: Patty, especially in your longer magazine pieces, you often take a familiar idea, a trend, a rule, a loophole, a social habit, and follow it much farther than most people would.
52:10
SPEAKER_06: So emotional support animals become a public stress test, AI companions become uh kind of emotionally complicated spreadsheets, to-do lists become a social ritual for managing dread.
52:23
SPEAKER_06: How do you know when something has enough comic machinery to keep going?
52:28
SPEAKER_03: Well, first of all, you gotta get up to word count.
52:31
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, let me let me go over here.
52:33
SPEAKER_03: And as I said, I I get bored in the middle, so I let's bring in something else that's a little bit if related even tangentially.
52:42
SPEAKER_03: Um I have two kinds of pieces that I write journalistically, and I would say I suggest some topics, and often they're they're assigned.
52:54
SPEAKER_03: One is how am I ever gonna get three to five thousand words out of this?
53:01
SPEAKER_03: You know, e-bikes.
53:03
SPEAKER_03: Like how I could do that in one word or less.
53:07
SPEAKER_03: And then there then there's other things, emotional support animals, uh jackpot, stuff like that, where you think, how can I could write a book on this?
53:19
SPEAKER_03: And there and it's there are two challenges.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
53:22
SPEAKER_03: Uh the one where you don't have enough words is kind of like, How am I gonna do this?
53:28
SPEAKER_03: And again, I didn't answer your question, but uh it's sort of necessity.
53:33
SPEAKER_03: I don't want to be boring, so I yeah, I I I can't keep doing the same thing, so I have to kind of go look over here, go look over here.
53:43
SPEAKER_03: And it's amazing how if you make them go look over here, and then you make them go look over here, you always can connect it.
53:51
SPEAKER_03: There's always a line somehow.
53:53
SPEAKER_06: Right, yeah.
53:54
SPEAKER_06: So my theory is that Patty, you often build a comedy by following the idea step by step, premise, argument, escalation.
54:02
SPEAKER_06: While you, Russ, for you, comedy arrives and lives in the density of the world itself, in the room, the object, the expression, the emotional weather.
54:12
SPEAKER_06: In one case, the detail is in the logic, and in the other, the detail is in the physical world.
54:19
SPEAKER_06: Do you think that's why you complement each other so well?
54:22
SPEAKER_02: Um Well, I mean, Patty writes, and uh drawing which is um things progress in a you know in a certain way through time, and a drawing is more like it's happening all at the same time.
54:41
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
54:41
SPEAKER_03: Uh so maybe I really envy you as a cartoonist because you don't have to do that act too.
54:49
SPEAKER_03: You get to go straight to what's really the gist of the.
54:52
SPEAKER_02: That's what a cartoon is.
54:53
SPEAKER_03: I have to develop it.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
54:55
SPEAKER_03: And I have to figure out a million other things that are like cartoons that are in itself interesting.
55:01
SPEAKER_03: And I do have to fill up space.
55:05
SPEAKER_03: So I I I can't have one.
55:10
SPEAKER_03: But I I do when I to the extent I consciously do this, you get an assignment, you think, why is this really interesting?
55:19
SPEAKER_03: It's not interesting because of superficially what it is.
55:23
SPEAKER_03: What is it saying about the anxiety of the time or the trends of the time, or how people relate, or how we've always related, and and so I do sort of think that through.
55:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
55:37
SPEAKER_02: And I think for me it's it's uh drawing cartoons for me is about like something that was funny, and then just finding the best way to when I write Shots of Murmurs, it's more like that.
55:50
SPEAKER_03: I have one burst of an idea.
55:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's and and a cartoon.
55:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
55:55
SPEAKER_02: Um and sometimes it might have a narrative thing, but the the the idea is really, I mean, the New Yorker cartoons were originally called idea drawings because you know there has to be a thing, but maybe telling that thing requires many panels.
56:12
SPEAKER_02: Um, requires like a story, um, especially if it's like something that like really happened that I want to, you know.
56:20
SPEAKER_06: So you choose how much to extend the narrative or how much to what it means.
56:25
SPEAKER_02: But I mean, some things are um a one-panel joke, some things are a four-panel joke, some things are a one-page joke.
56:36
SPEAKER_03: So I'd like to contradict something I said.
56:38
SPEAKER_03: Shouts and murmurs, yes, they're one burst of inspiration, but then to me, this a good shouts is you don't know every everywhere it's gonna go by looking at the title or the first sentence.
56:56
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it just seems churned out.
56:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:58
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I usually start with an idea that I really like that seems funny to me, but then I have to figure out how to need KNEAD it so that it's surprising throughout.
57:14
SPEAKER_03: And sometimes that's using some characters, sometimes it's having something thread through it.
57:21
SPEAKER_02: But you don't want it to be like, you know, the onion articles where you the headline is really the joke, and then you know, you read the article and it's really just You know they have two staffs.
57:31
SPEAKER_03: They have a staff that comes up with headlines.
57:34
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if they still do, but they did for years, and they certainly did when they started, and then a staff that fills it in.
57:40
SPEAKER_03: Wow, it sure does show.
57:42
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
57:43
SPEAKER_06: We know the better staff.
57:45
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
57:46
SPEAKER_06: I know that Ross keeps a box.
57:48
SPEAKER_06: You keep a box with ideas and you scraps of paper.
57:51
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
57:52
SPEAKER_06: Is do you have an equivalent of that, Patty?
57:54
SPEAKER_03: I wish I did.
57:56
SPEAKER_03: I keep thinking this is a really bad thing about me.
57:58
SPEAKER_03: Like, I can't do it now because it's too late.
58:01
SPEAKER_03: Like, nothing's too late.
58:03
SPEAKER_03: But uh yeah, I always have good ideas.
58:06
SPEAKER_03: I do have like a file in my computer of shop's ideas.
58:12
SPEAKER_03: I have 10 million of them.
58:14
SPEAKER_03: And I have That's like my box.
58:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, completely the same thing.
58:18
SPEAKER_03: Uh and and I lot of times write like in the middle of the night, uh, an idea, an email uh in the subject line.
58:28
SPEAKER_03: And so if I go like through my emails from me to me, I get some ideas, but I also get like clean the closet.
58:37
SPEAKER_03: I get a lot of a lot of that stuff.
58:39
SPEAKER_03: And I I also get because I can't really see in the middle of the night because I don't have my glasses, so and I'm not that good of a texture, or so I get like the ship sails in the trash can.
58:54
SPEAKER_03: And I go, oh yeah, what was that?
58:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, I'll do that.
58:58
SPEAKER_03: Get right over the shore.
59:00
SPEAKER_02: Or sometimes I in my box I have like you know, napkins.
59:04
SPEAKER_03: You know, like what?
59:05
SPEAKER_03: And it was so obvious.
59:06
SPEAKER_03: It was so obvious.
59:08
SPEAKER_03: It's like what best idea in the world.
59:10
SPEAKER_02: I'll never forget what that idea was if I just write down napkins.
59:14
SPEAKER_06: That's you know, it's just like what?
59:18
SPEAKER_06: Do you use the notes app at all?
59:20
SPEAKER_06: The notes app.
59:22
SPEAKER_06: No.
59:23
SPEAKER_06: Should I?
59:24
SPEAKER_06: You should.
59:24
SPEAKER_03: I wish I'm addicted to the notes appear because I didn't do it.
59:27
SPEAKER_06: That's my equivalent of the idea box.
59:29
SPEAKER_03: I should do that.
59:30
SPEAKER_03: Would be so much better than email.
59:32
SPEAKER_06: It's a lot better.
59:32
SPEAKER_06: It's a lot and it sinks across your devices.
59:36
SPEAKER_06: I have it.
59:37
SPEAKER_02: I have it.
59:37
SPEAKER_02: I've never used it.
59:38
SPEAKER_06: I might turn a new leaf.
59:40
SPEAKER_06: I'm yeah, I'm a notes app person.
59:42
SPEAKER_06: So um, very sophisticated question about method.
59:46
SPEAKER_06: When you sit down at your desk, you're on deadline, what happens?
59:50
SPEAKER_02: Um drink coffee, a lot of puttering, doodling.
59:56
SPEAKER_02: Hopefully, when I start working on my batch, I have one idea, at least one idea that I cannot wait to draw up.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_02: Because that sort of gets the wheels going.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_02: I mean, not if you if you wait until, you know, but then there's weeks where I don't have an idea.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_02: It's still, I have to sit down at the desk.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_02: You have to sort of start, and um, because nothing's gonna get done if you don't start.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes I might have a cartoon that um that I like but didn't sell, and you know, I'll rework it.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's not like they'll not remember this one, but uh this it's resubmission is um part of the process for all the cartoonists.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_02: So I mean we submit a group of cartoons every week, and if you're lucky, they take one.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of rejected cartoons.
1:00:48
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes I do a cartoon that I really love and they don't take it, and then I have to figure out a way to sort of restate it uh and hopefully sell it.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_02: And it does sometimes work.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_02: I've had cartoons that like sold like on the third or fourth iteration.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_06: Wow.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_02: So I mean, I generally don't just submit them as they were.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_02: Like I feel like, okay, gotta figure this out because this is a good idea.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_02: This is funny.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_02: Um, so I have to figure out a better way to put it.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_06: I mean, it's great because you have like a place to start that's not a blank page, number one, when you're like really nervous about it.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_06: And it's also great because maybe it wasn't the time for that cartoon back then, but it is.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yes.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_02: There's all kinds of reasons.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean, somebody might have submitted a cartoon that was sort of similar to Debbie that they bought, and you know, it's it, yeah, it definitely is better than starting.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the the blank, the completely blank slate, I don't think I mean it feels like that, but it really isn't, you know.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_06: So what about you, Patty?
1:01:53
SPEAKER_06: You're on deadline, you sit down at your desk.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_06: Is it really organized?
1:01:57
SPEAKER_06: Is it chaotic?
1:01:58
SPEAKER_03: You don't feel this way because you've you're birds, you have responsibilities.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_03: I am always working and never working.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_03: Like I don't part of me is always trying to figure something out.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_03: And I tell myself, yes, you're walking to Trader Joe's, even though you need nothing at Trader Joe's.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_03: But the creative process always goes on.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_03: I do a lot of waste of time looking around the internet.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's if anybody ever published the things I Google, I'd have to shoot myself.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_03: It's so embarrassing.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_03: I but and then you have to kind of work, they go, I wonder what like Scarlett Johansson's children's names are.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_03: For some reason I know that.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_03: If I'm working on something, even though I I complain about that, it's really hard, and I'll never ever do it.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_03: I'll never I can't finish, I'll never do it.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_03: It is preferable to I don't know what I'm doing.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_03: Or like if I have to pitch ideas, yeah.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_03: It's just yeah, everything seems so bad, and I don't know.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_03: I I you know it's it's hopeless and then more hopeless, and then a little less hopeless.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_06: So the work happens on one side of the deadline, but on the other side of the deadline is an editor and an institution waiting for the work.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_06: For both of you, one of those institutions has consistently been the New Yorker, which from the outside can look less like a magazine and more like a cathedral of taste, especially if you're looking at it from someplace outside of New York.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_06: I remember I had a professor who was an editor there, and he told me, it's not like the New Yorker is so great.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_06: And uh, of course that didn't burst my bubble.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_06: What has the New Yorker meant at different points in your life before you started working there, when you first began working there, and now after decades of being part of it?
1:04:02
SPEAKER_03: Well, my parents subscribed.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_03: I didn't particularly look.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_03: Um, I maybe looked I either I or everybody else in the world looked at the cartoons.
1:04:13
SPEAKER_03: But I looked, I knew it, and I knew it was a a classy magazine, and it was the pinnacle.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_03: Uh and uh when I I sold my first talk, my father cried.
1:04:27
SPEAKER_03: Um and um what else?
1:04:32
SPEAKER_03: What's so great about it is they care about the word.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_03: They can't they they care about details, they they they there must be when you write a piece, there must be eight million proofs that come to you.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_03: They go over everything.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_03: Fact-checking, but fact checking.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_03: Fact checking is great.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_03: I've I've had some doozy mistakes.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_03: You know my mistake about the shouts about the I once did, these are my two funny favorite shouts, I mean fact-check stories.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_03: I once did a piece, a shouts and murmur, millions of years ago, about a pledge drive for myself.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_03: And it was sort of in that template, and it got you know more and more desperate.
1:05:17
SPEAKER_03: And at some point it was like, and for five dollars, Patty, I wrote it in the third person, Patty Will, which is a good word for saying a blow job.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that okay.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_03: And the galley or the proof comes back, and it had been switched from five dollars to five hundred, and I would give the person you know, uh if they would give me that, I would do that thing.
1:05:48
SPEAKER_03: And I thought, well, the joke's not really as funny if it's five hundred.
1:05:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_03: But first of all, they have fact checkers, they know my going rate.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_03: Secondly, it's kind of flattering, really.
1:06:05
SPEAKER_03: So I never said anything, and then years later I asked my editor, who said, well, that must have been a typo or something.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't even true.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_03: And the other one is I did a piece on couch surfing and had a paragraph where I like these are the places you can couch surf in the wrong exotic places.
1:06:22
SPEAKER_03: Including then Afghanistan, where there was a war going on then.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_03: And I said, You could stay with a warlord in Afghanistan.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_03: Well, I read my notes wrong, they kind of shifted.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_03: And I accused some poor civil engineer in the print of being a warlord.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_03: And they caught that?
1:06:44
SPEAKER_03: No.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_03: It was in the magazine.
1:06:46
SPEAKER_03: We corrected it online later.
1:06:50
SPEAKER_02: After I got out of uh of college, I never thought I was gonna become a New Yorker, a cartoonist.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_02: I really I didn't know that they would be that open-minded.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean, my parents subscribed, I saw the cartoons, they were uh single panel, and they had a gagline in that italic type underneath, and I did not see how my stuff fit in at all.
1:07:13
SPEAKER_02: Um and I was selling to the Village Voice and to the National Lampoon, and I thought if I were very lucky, I would become a cartoonist for The Village Voice because my stuff was you know not that format and it was very idiosyncratic.
1:07:28
SPEAKER_02: And when I submitted to The New Yorker, uh they um and it was the first you know, which is weird, and it was the first time I submitted, and Lee Lorenz, who was the art editor, uh I submitted over the transom, you know, dropped my portfolio off.
1:07:47
SPEAKER_02: And um when I went back to pick it up, uh instead of a rejection note, there was a note from him to come see him.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_02: And they took a cartoon, which was uh very odd.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_02: It was all the cartoons I submitted, it was probably the most personal and the weirdest one.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_02: Um, and it was my own like little language and the kinds of drawings that I do for myself to make myself laugh, you know.
1:08:10
SPEAKER_02: They're interested in somebody who has their own voice.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_02: And the people that I have always been most pulled towards are the people that have very specific comic worlds, you know, like George Booth and and Ed Corin and Helen Hawkinson, and of course Charles Adams, who was my first cartoon love from when I was about nine.
1:08:29
SPEAKER_02: But people who drew their own way, they drew in the way they wanted to draw, and the jokes that they were telling were their own sort of jokes.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_02: You know, they weren't um generic.
1:08:46
SPEAKER_02: I just think that the way all of the cartoons fit together, all those individual voices is really kind of a great thing because the people who were the best are the people who were they're different from one another.
1:08:59
SPEAKER_02: You know, on paper where you have these cartoons that sort of float in a sea of type, you know, they're like almost like a rest for your eyes.
1:09:07
SPEAKER_02: It's a magazine within a magazine.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_02: So to be part of that, I will never, every day to me, it seems like a miracle that they took a chance on me.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there were people who, when I started, hated my stuff.
1:09:24
SPEAKER_02: I mean, some of the older cartoonists I still remember Lee Lorenz, who was my first editor, um, he he said that one of the older guys actually asked if Lee owed my family money.
1:09:36
SPEAKER_02: Um so Lee took some crap from people.
1:09:41
SPEAKER_02: Um and I remember even Dan Maneker told me that when uh when he was an editor at the New Yorker, um, and we became very good friends.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_02: But when my first stuff first started being published, he just hated it.
1:09:54
SPEAKER_02: So did Ed Corin.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was very, very different.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_02: But part of me was like, this is not my fault.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_02: I didn't even want to be a New Yorker cartoonist, you know.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_02: This was not my goal, it was gonna be the village voice.
1:10:07
SPEAKER_02: So don't blame me, you know.
1:10:10
SPEAKER_02: But but they were, you know, brave enough to be and interested enough in people's individual artists, you know, that they didn't like try to like, well, we like your stuff, but can you like make it more about boardrooms or something?
1:10:27
SPEAKER_02: I mean, yeah, you know, no, they let me be who I was.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_02: They didn't make me conform, they didn't make me say, well, we like your stuff, but you have to draw it with a gag line underneath it, you know, um, which wouldn't have worked.
1:10:42
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:10:43
SPEAKER_02: So that's it means it means um and today in a world where there are fewer and fewer magazines, uh there aren't that many other places.
1:10:54
SPEAKER_03: No, there couldn't be.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_03: And I'll tell you, we're getting out of life at the right time because they're not gonna be, I mean, there's not gonna be anything.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_02: But sometimes I feel like you know, some this is maybe just tangentially related, you know, that horrible, horrible uh Frank Sinatra song about New York.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_02: And if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
1:11:19
SPEAKER_02: And I always feel like this is the only place that I would be able to survive.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I do, you know, I I live part-time, uh, you know, I lived my moved out to Connecticut to raise our children.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_02: Don't ask.
1:11:32
SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's still the New York general area.
1:11:37
SPEAKER_02: We're talking about, you know, Connecticut that's an hour and ten minutes away, not like some godforsaken other area.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I I just don't know, you know, without the New Yorker, whether other places would have been brave enough, you know.
1:11:54
SPEAKER_06: So what does a long creative friendship between women allow that professional approval doesn't they seem like two different things.
1:12:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, professional approval generally means that you have a job and they're gonna pay you money, hopefully.
1:12:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and uh we're making a living, and uh our friendship is you know, we like spending time with each other, we like collaborating on projects and yeah, the purpose is kind of to have a good time.
1:12:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
1:12:25
SPEAKER_02: If we wanted to just like go to Central Park and like hold hands and like skip around the reservoir, like skipping, we could do that.
1:12:33
SPEAKER_03: Good idea.
1:12:34
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't on today, today in degree.
1:12:37
SPEAKER_02: It's like two New Yorkers die.
1:12:42
SPEAKER_03: But we're very lucky in that we get to have both of them at the same time.
1:12:48
SPEAKER_03: We've taken a lot of like fabulous work trips.
1:12:51
SPEAKER_03: Yes, we went to the Galapa coast, yes, we went to We walked down 29th Street.
1:12:56
SPEAKER_02: We went to the street.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_03: We went across 29th Street as if it were a festival.
1:13:00
SPEAKER_03: Lewis and Clark expedition.
1:13:02
SPEAKER_02: Yes, from the west coast of Manhattan to the east.
1:13:06
SPEAKER_03: And and it couldn't have been perfect where it ended at Bellevue.
1:13:12
SPEAKER_02: No, we didn't.
1:13:24
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, it's Bellevue.
1:13:27
SPEAKER_02: That was pretty good.
1:13:29
SPEAKER_06: So that brings us to one of the major two-person bands of the current century.
1:13:34
SPEAKER_06: I'm talking, of course, about ukulele meltdown, your ukulele duo, which feels like a joyful warning of what happens when collaboration goes just as midge too far.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's true.
1:13:50
SPEAKER_03: I don't think it was far enough.
1:13:52
SPEAKER_06: The ukulele is widely considered one of the uh easiest instruments to learn.
1:13:58
SPEAKER_06: It really seems like halfway between an instrument and a toy.
1:14:01
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
1:14:02
SPEAKER_03: I don't even know halfway.
1:14:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:14:04
SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you have a hand.
1:14:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, one hand.
1:14:09
SPEAKER_03: One hand.
1:14:10
SPEAKER_03: You could do it totally.
1:14:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
1:14:13
SPEAKER_03: So what it's easier than clapping.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it is, it is.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_06: I think you you or either one of you said it's easier than the just to step up from the triangle.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_06: It is, yeah.
1:14:25
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
1:14:26
SPEAKER_06: So what's the story there and what drew you to it?
1:14:29
SPEAKER_03: Well what what okay, what happened was I was invited to a wedding.
1:14:34
SPEAKER_03: It took place uh during the um solar eclipse, and it was gonna happen at a place where we do it.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_03: And the guests were instructed if you bring if you know a musical instrument, bring it.
1:14:49
SPEAKER_03: I knew no musical instrument, but I thought, how hard could you really be?
1:14:55
SPEAKER_03: And so I bought one for$40.
1:14:58
SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, and then you have the internet and then you can play a song.
1:15:02
SPEAKER_03: We did Here Comedy Sun.
1:15:04
SPEAKER_03: And I showed Raj, and you bought it immediately because it's blue.
1:15:09
SPEAKER_03: I mean, if it weren't for blue, we wouldn't really have a tip.
1:15:14
SPEAKER_03: So we started just goofing around, playing, and also inventing this whole imagined celebrity that we had.
1:15:22
SPEAKER_02: Yes, and we remember friends in Russia as children.
1:15:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, the Ukraine.
1:15:27
SPEAKER_02: The Ukraine, yeah.
1:15:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and we you know, we were with we were the ones, we were with Bob Dylan, we told him to go nasal, we we did it all.
1:15:36
SPEAKER_03: We did it all.
1:15:37
SPEAKER_03: And then we started playing songs.
1:15:39
SPEAKER_03: We take public domain songs and ruin them.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_03: Uh and lately don't tell anybody um we notice that no one seems to care, so we sometimes go into private domain too, and we ruin them, and we um we have such a good time.
1:16:00
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if the people listening do, but we really do, and we ranked.
1:16:04
SPEAKER_02: And luckily the songs are short, so even if they're not having a good time, yeah, it'll be over in the year.
1:16:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and they're yes, it was as we say it, it's like at the when the doctor says you'll feel a little discomfort and then it's over.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_03: And we will say the premise of the band is kind of genius because it's a comedy band.
1:16:26
SPEAKER_03: So the worse we are, the better it is.
1:16:29
SPEAKER_03: Someone said to me, If you practice, you become really pretty good.
1:16:31
SPEAKER_03: I go, What would the point?
1:16:34
SPEAKER_03: And the worse we are, the more we're asked to play.
1:16:39
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I you're probably gonna ask us.
1:16:43
SPEAKER_06: So yeah, probably.
1:16:45
SPEAKER_06: So with that, I will just stop talking and let the band take over.
1:16:51
SPEAKER_03: This is called Picasso.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:16:53
SPEAKER_03: Sketch, sketch, sketch, taboo, wise, then guitar.
1:16:57
SPEAKER_03: Mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_03: No more Pin no more.
1:17:02
unknown: Okay, okay.
1:17:04
SPEAKER_03: This is called Michelangelo.
1:17:06
unknown: Okay.
1:17:07
SPEAKER_03: Sculpt, sculpt, sculpt the sound, Michelangelo.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_03: What the hell, David fell?
1:17:13
SPEAKER_03: Time to use Play-Doh, dog.
1:17:17
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:17:18
SPEAKER_03: No, not let me next, I'll show you.
1:17:21
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:17:21
SPEAKER_03: Renoir.
1:17:22
SPEAKER_03: And I'm gonna give a little background.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, as you know, nobody, nobody likes Renoir.
1:17:29
SPEAKER_03: And some people hate Renoir so much that in 2015 there were a group of protesters outside the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
1:17:39
SPEAKER_03: And um the protests um spread to New York and the Philadelphia Art Museum.
1:17:47
SPEAKER_03: And um there was some a lot of people held up signs that said God hates Ren Moore.
1:17:53
SPEAKER_03: That's not, I mean, it is funny, but it's true.
1:17:55
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:17:56
SPEAKER_03: Uh, and so this is about Ren Moore.
1:18:00
SPEAKER_03: Okay, uh, ready, set, go.
1:18:03
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
1:18:05
SPEAKER_03: August treat of going too far.
1:18:07
SPEAKER_03: Every girl looks 12 years old.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_03: That's why God hates for Ren Moore.
1:18:11
SPEAKER_03: That's why God hates Ren Moore.
1:18:13
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:18:14
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:18:15
SPEAKER_03: Now we're gonna do Mary Cassatt.
1:18:17
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:18:19
SPEAKER_03: Cassatt, cassette.
1:18:20
SPEAKER_03: Mary Cassatt painted dates and moms.
1:18:23
SPEAKER_03: But secretly she liked to paint porn and cherry bones.
1:18:28
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:18:28
SPEAKER_03: Okay, this is Duchamp.
1:18:30
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:18:32
SPEAKER_04: P P P P.
1:18:34
SPEAKER_04: I must lock the urinal.
1:18:36
SPEAKER_03: It's art, it's art, it's art, it's art.
1:18:38
SPEAKER_03: We're original Marcel's original.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_03: This we're gonna do at the very end.
1:18:43
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:18:44
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:18:44
SPEAKER_03: Um we're gonna do okay.
1:18:46
SPEAKER_03: For some reason, Roz and I love, we have a lot of a lot of lamb songs.
1:18:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:18:53
SPEAKER_03: So we're gonna, we're, I don't know why.
1:18:55
SPEAKER_03: We don't even particularly like lambs, or maybe never even saw a lamb in our wives.
1:18:59
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:19:00
SPEAKER_03: But um, so this is the first of two we're gonna play.
1:19:03
SPEAKER_03: This is called Mary Had a Comfort Lamb.
1:19:07
SPEAKER_03: When your mark, get set, go.
1:19:11
SPEAKER_04: Mary had a comfort lamb, comfort lamb, comfort lamb, Mary had a comfort lamb who was a lunatic.
1:19:24
SPEAKER_04: And everyone who Mary met, Mary met, Mary met, everyone who Mary met, the lamb was short to kick.
1:19:36
SPEAKER_04: She took the lamb to Spain one day, Spain one day, Spain one day, she took the lamb to Spain one day, it sat in C twelve B.
1:19:49
SPEAKER_02: It made the violet curse and cry, curse and cry, curse and cry, it made the violet curse and cry, and then it went wee wee.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_04: The lamb has a comfort pig, comfort pig, comfort pig, the lamb has a comfort pig, plus B T S D.
1:20:18
SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
1:20:19
SPEAKER_03: In case you didn't have enough uh lambs in your life.
1:20:23
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:20:23
SPEAKER_03: Um uh okay uh uh ready set go.
1:20:31
SPEAKER_04: Excuse me, wait staff, have you any lamb?
1:20:36
SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir, yes, sir.
1:20:38
SPEAKER_00: Call me Pam.
1:20:40
SPEAKER_00: Lamb for myself, please.
1:20:43
SPEAKER_03: Lamb for mamma.
1:20:45
SPEAKER_04: Rare but not too too rare, don't want to hear it, Bah.
1:20:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, may I tell you about the lamb?
1:20:55
SPEAKER_03: No Pam, no Pam, kindly scram.
1:21:00
SPEAKER_00: Raised by a widow, fed only kale, worked his way through middle school, then went off to Yale.
1:21:09
SPEAKER_00: Blah blah blah blah, what a provenance.
1:21:13
SPEAKER_00: Grandpa, grandma, uncle, Hans.
1:21:17
SPEAKER_02: He once wrote an opera about Chem and Mao.
1:21:22
SPEAKER_02: Do you wanna hear it?
1:21:23
SPEAKER_02: I'll sing it for you now.
1:21:26
SPEAKER_03: Go, go, Pam, go.
1:21:28
SPEAKER_04: Can't you understand?
1:21:31
SPEAKER_04: All we want is the ham lamb.
1:21:37
SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay, enough of the lamb.
1:21:40
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:21:41
SPEAKER_03: Okay, then we also have a series of sad, really sad.
1:21:47
SPEAKER_03: Get your tissues out.
1:21:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:21:49
SPEAKER_03: Sad, whiny, whiny songs, and you will play this um sadio and slow-yo and whiny-o.
1:21:57
SPEAKER_03: It's just the worst.
1:21:58
SPEAKER_01: Okay, there is a loft in tribunal called the loft of the rise sing as big as a grain of sand, and it looks an event.
1:22:28
SPEAKER_01: I try to get a mortgage.
1:22:35
SPEAKER_00: They asked me what your job I'm trying to write a novel.
1:22:49
SPEAKER_00: It's a doubt rock.
1:22:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh mother, oh me, was they want a town pavement?
1:23:11
SPEAKER_00: And I need to put a bathroom in the loft of the rising.
1:23:24
SPEAKER_03: We have a lot of whiny songs that we won't put on there.
1:23:27
SPEAKER_03: We have, should we just do the chorus of this one?
1:23:30
SPEAKER_02: This one is complicated.
1:23:32
SPEAKER_03: Okay, we we have one called It Ain't Fair Lord, to the tune of It Ain't It Ain't Me, Babe.
1:23:37
SPEAKER_03: Which I I think all all Bob Dylan's songs are in the public domain.
1:23:41
SPEAKER_03: I don't know this one.
1:23:42
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna have to fake it.
1:23:43
SPEAKER_03: Okay, we won't do well okay.
1:23:46
SPEAKER_04: Okay, we're just gonna fake it.
1:23:48
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, okay.
1:23:49
SPEAKER_04: It ain't Fair Lord.
1:23:53
SPEAKER_04: No, no, no, it ain't Fair Lord.
1:23:56
SPEAKER_04: It ain't fair.
1:23:59
SPEAKER_04: The username I wanted was taken.
1:24:02
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
1:24:03
SPEAKER_02: They changed the salsa at my favorite Mexican restaurant.
1:24:06
SPEAKER_02: Now it's way too spicy.
1:24:08
SPEAKER_04: And my charger's in the other room, and I have to walk there.
1:24:12
SPEAKER_00: And the groceries I ordered came too early, and the ice cream is melting.
1:24:16
SPEAKER_04: And the vomit my captain was too vomited.
1:24:23
SPEAKER_04: No, no, no, it ain't fair.
1:24:26
SPEAKER_04: Dear Lord.
1:24:27
SPEAKER_04: Alright, that's it.
1:24:28
SPEAKER_04: We never played.
1:24:29
SPEAKER_04: It's everyone.
1:24:31
SPEAKER_03: It's a bit of a.
1:24:33
SPEAKER_03: This song is called I Should Be Working on the Railroad, but I'm doing other stuff.
1:24:39
SPEAKER_03: And when I finish doing the other stuff, I'll get back to the railroad.
1:24:44
SPEAKER_03: Okay?
1:24:45
SPEAKER_03: On your mark, get set, go.
1:24:48
SPEAKER_00: I've been working on my laundry.
1:24:51
SPEAKER_00: Still have five months left.
1:24:55
SPEAKER_00: I've been working on my laundry.
1:24:58
SPEAKER_00: Must report on one suck.
1:25:02
SPEAKER_00: Think I know who might have stole it.
1:25:05
SPEAKER_00: She gets here early in the morning.
1:25:09
SPEAKER_00: She dances with a fair and both of the porn.
1:25:17
SPEAKER_00: I can kill the time on me.
1:25:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, damn.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_00: I can kill the time on me.
1:25:27
SPEAKER_00: Just bought some sparish spray.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_00: And you hear the fadox combined.
1:25:35
SPEAKER_00: Look, it's so early in the morning.
1:25:38
SPEAKER_00: And you hear the fannix combin.
1:25:42
SPEAKER_00: It's two tons of corn.
1:25:45
SPEAKER_00: Ebe won't you go?
1:25:47
SPEAKER_00: Ebe won't you go?
1:25:49
SPEAKER_02: Ebe won't you go?
1:25:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh way, way, way.
1:25:52
SPEAKER_00: Ebe won't you go?
1:25:54
SPEAKER_00: Ebe won't you go?
1:25:55
SPEAKER_00: Picka puppy off today.
1:25:58
SPEAKER_03: I played a chord one.
1:26:01
SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
1:26:02
SPEAKER_03: This should do this one?
1:26:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:26:05
SPEAKER_00: Look, look, look at this.
1:26:07
SPEAKER_00: Am I gonna die?
1:26:09
SPEAKER_04: No no no no no no no.
1:26:11
SPEAKER_04: It's just a lousy sky.
1:26:13
SPEAKER_00: Look, look, look at this, doesn't it, look red?
1:26:17
SPEAKER_04: Ayi ai.
1:26:20
SPEAKER_04: I think you might be dead.
1:26:22
SPEAKER_02: Ow, ow, ow, my head.
1:26:24
SPEAKER_02: Is this a deadly bite?
1:26:26
SPEAKER_04: No no no no no no no.
1:26:28
SPEAKER_04: Your hat is on too tight.
1:26:31
SPEAKER_02: Sneeze, sneeze, sneeze, I sneeze.
1:26:34
SPEAKER_02: Now I feel a chill.
1:26:36
SPEAKER_04: Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh oh, uh-oh.
1:26:38
SPEAKER_04: You better write your will.
1:26:41
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:26:43
SPEAKER_02: Don't do the other parks.
1:26:44
SPEAKER_03: No, no.
1:26:46
SPEAKER_03: Okay, now just we have two more songs and then art songs.
1:26:49
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
1:26:50
SPEAKER_02: Oh yes, okay.
1:26:52
SPEAKER_03: Alright.
1:26:52
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:26:53
SPEAKER_03: When your mark gets set, don't go too fast.
1:26:55
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:26:56
SPEAKER_03: On your mark gets set, go.
1:27:03
SPEAKER_00: Near the hat in air.
1:27:09
SPEAKER_00: If you see a floating apple, it's not their motion.
1:27:18
SPEAKER_00: We will both be so hard broken.
1:27:23
SPEAKER_00: Cause that pipe is just a token.
1:27:27
SPEAKER_00: If you will meet me in the caucus, don't ask me how or where.
1:27:37
SPEAKER_04: Did we say that was from the Greek?
1:27:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that was from Greek.
1:27:40
SPEAKER_03: Now we oh we have two more.
1:27:43
SPEAKER_02: Oh right, right, right.
1:27:45
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:27:47
SPEAKER_03: And hell dolly, you're so real.
1:27:55
SPEAKER_01: Dolly, it's so nuts.
1:27:57
SPEAKER_02: The way your clocks are misbehave.
1:28:02
SPEAKER_04: They slip and slide.
1:28:06
SPEAKER_02: Dolly won't decide.
1:28:09
SPEAKER_04: Dolly, every minute's work and melting.
1:28:14
SPEAKER_04: Every second's gone astray.
1:28:17
SPEAKER_04: So what's the time, Dolly?
1:28:21
SPEAKER_04: You don't know.
1:28:24
SPEAKER_04: Dolly, every answer you got won't since way back when So get a phone fella.
1:28:39
SPEAKER_00: Leave and log a lone fella.
1:28:43
SPEAKER_00: Dolly will death for be late.
1:28:47
SPEAKER_00: Dolly will death for be late.
1:28:58
SPEAKER_01: Alright.
1:28:59
SPEAKER_01: One more.
1:29:00
SPEAKER_01: One more.
1:29:00
SPEAKER_02: And then we promise we'll be done.
1:29:03
SPEAKER_02: We promise we'll be done.
1:29:06
SPEAKER_03: Run out of here.
1:29:07
SPEAKER_03: You can throw us out.
1:29:09
SPEAKER_03: This is called Van Gogh.
1:29:12
SPEAKER_01: Go, go, go, go, van go, go, go, go or go.
1:29:16
SPEAKER_00: Just stay in the much clearer.
1:29:22
SPEAKER_02: And then you cough.
1:29:27
SPEAKER_02: I did have an art teacher who said Van Gogh.
1:29:30
unknown: Van Gogh.
1:29:31
SPEAKER_02: Van Gogh.
1:29:32
SPEAKER_02: I guess that's correct.
1:29:33
SPEAKER_02: I want to go, maybe we'll do this together.
1:29:35
SPEAKER_03: Go to a dinner party and just start mispronouncing arbitrary things and just feel as if people have a copy of us.
1:29:43
unknown: Oh, that would be funny.
1:29:45
SPEAKER_06: That would be very funny.
1:29:47
SPEAKER_06: Well, that was amazing.
1:29:49
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
1:29:50
SPEAKER_06: Patty Marks.
1:29:51
SPEAKER_06: Ross Chast.
1:29:53
SPEAKER_06: Ross Chast, Patty Marks.
1:29:56
SPEAKER_06: Absolute legend.
1:29:58
SPEAKER_06: Thank you for being here today.
1:30:00
SPEAKER_06: It was an honor.
1:30:01
SPEAKER_03: Thank you for talking to us.
1:30:03
SPEAKER_03: We loved it.
1:30:04
SPEAKER_03: We had a good time.
1:30:05
SPEAKER_06: Very fun.
1:30:05
SPEAKER_06: It was fun.
1:30:06
SPEAKER_03: It was fun.
1:30:10
SPEAKER_06: If this conversation resonated with you, follow the show wherever you listen and find me on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Substack at RuseyHive.
1:30:20
SPEAKER_06: If someone came to mind for the Hive, send guest suggestions to guests at RusyHive.com.
1:30:26
SPEAKER_06: And if you just want to say hi, it's hello at ruseyhive.com.
1:30:31
SPEAKER_06: Original music and sonic identity for the Rusey Hive by Ant Food.
1:30:35
SPEAKER_06: Until next time, let your life be a creative act.