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Transcript

With Great Power #322... 22 Panels with Ronald Wimberly · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:00
  Tad Eggleston: Media Rez.
• 0:01
  Tad Eggleston: Something interesting for the cartoonists listening.
• 0:05
  ronaldwimberly: Right, we were talking, we were talking about…
• 0:08
  ronaldwimberly: a job that I took a while ago.
• 0:12
  ronaldwimberly: And you know, you're a working artist, right? So you, you know, you… you're not…
• 0:18
  ronaldwimberly: so special that you don't do work that you don't always want to do. But people do hire you.
• 0:26
  ronaldwimberly: for a particular skill that you have. And if you're a cartoonist, that may also be the way that you think.
• 0:32
  ronaldwimberly: But that doesn't mean that they don't want something particularly from you.
• 0:36
  ronaldwimberly: And that was this type of job.
• 0:39
  ronaldwimberly: And I was gonna say, my knee-jerk reaction was, like, oh, I wouldn't do this job.
• 0:43
  ronaldwimberly: If I were to get the offer today.
• 0:48
  ronaldwimberly: But… Yeah, I probably wouldn't do it because the rate is too low.
• 0:53
  ronaldwimberly: Something for…
• 0:54
  Tad Eggleston: I'd say, would you not do it, or would it cost more?
• 0:58
  ronaldwimberly: Well, yeah, it would cost more, but the way comics work is…
• 1:05
  ronaldwimberly: the cost is always there, it's just, like, who pays it? And the way a lot of publishers work.
• 1:13
  ronaldwimberly: is that… The artist, in my opinion, ends up paying the cost.
• 1:19
  ronaldwimberly: It's like, wow.
• 1:21
  ronaldwimberly: Look, I'm… you know, I'm… I'm not…
• 1:24
  ronaldwimberly: I don't manage the books of, you know, bigger publishers.
• 1:30
  ronaldwimberly: And I've just started to kind of try to do things on my own.
• 1:35
  ronaldwimberly: But… It seems like the risk… you know, like, publishers put out a lot of different work,
• 1:47
  ronaldwimberly: You know, like, the… it… The rates for the artists are kind of…
• 1:54
  ronaldwimberly: low. I'm not sure that they're enough for the artist to make A living wage.
• 2:00
  ronaldwimberly: Maybe if they don't live in New York, maybe that's my problem.
• 2:03
  ronaldwimberly: That's certainly part.
• 2:04
  Tad Eggleston: Even outside of New York, too often they're not.
• 2:08
  ronaldwimberly: Right.
• 2:09
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 2:10
  ronaldwimberly: So the game…
• 2:11
  Tad Eggleston: Recently read a thing from a relatively…
• 2:15
  Tad Eggleston: successful artist, this friend of mine on his Patreon, you know, just kind of breaking down bills as he's in a rare period where he doesn't have actually a paying gig lined up beyond, like, next month, something like that.
• 2:30
  Tad Eggleston: And he lives in one of the cheapest places in the country to live.
• 2:35
  ronaldwimberly: Where's he live?
• 2:37
  Tad Eggleston: he, he, Shh, I don't know
• 2:43
  Tad Eggleston: I think he's in Indiana… either Indiana or Kentucky, but, like… Perfect.
• 2:48
  ronaldwimberly: He got out, so, to help him.
• 2:49
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 2:50
  ronaldwimberly: You know, it's…
• 2:51
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, because, I mean, he put it out publicly.
• 2:54
  ronaldwimberly: Right.
• 2:55
  Tad Eggleston: I just didn't feel like making it about him, because it is a broader thing.
• 2:59
  ronaldwimberly: Right, right.
• 3:00
  Tad Eggleston: Is that, like, it really doesn't matter where…
• 3:06
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, obviously, yeah, New York's more expensive, Then… Alabama. But… Yes and no, because,
• 3:19
  Tad Eggleston: you have different sets of resources available to you living in New York.
• 3:23
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 3:24
  Tad Eggleston: than you do… I mean, like…
• 3:26
  ronaldwimberly: I don't have a car note, I don't pay car insurance, I don't pay for parking. I mean, it's not a lot, but, you know…
• 3:32
  ronaldwimberly: Still…
• 3:33
  Tad Eggleston: But, but…
• 3:34
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah.
• 3:34
  Tad Eggleston: But also, like…
• 3:36
  Tad Eggleston: We're in an age where you work remotely, so high-speed internet matters, and there's still huge swaths of the country where it's hard to get that, and or really expensive.
• 3:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that… that was part of the infrastructure plan.
• 3:52
  Tad Eggleston: It got completely blasted by all the people
• 3:55
  Tad Eggleston: Who just didn't think that anything that a certain party does can possibly be good, and then they would go and they'd take credit for the bill that they…
• 4:04
  Tad Eggleston: voted against.
• 4:05
  Tad Eggleston: when… when it made internet cheaper for the people who lived in their states. But, like, I mean…
• 4:15
  ronaldwimberly: The, the…
• 4:16
  Tad Eggleston: the most telling article I've seen in a long time about one of the… what?
• 4:21
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, I said the most…
• 4:22
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. One of the most telling articles I've read in a long time about, like, kind of the difference between living places is that…
• 4:31
  Tad Eggleston: Christy Noem, when she was governor of South Dakota, was hiring all of the, like.
• 4:38
  Tad Eggleston: We're gonna use big air quotes here.
• 4:40
  Tad Eggleston: best and brightest young Republican minds to… to come… To come work for her.
• 4:48
  Tad Eggleston: And she couldn't keep any of them for more than a month or so, because it didn't matter how much she paid them, they were bored as shit.
• 4:54
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 4:56
  Tad Eggleston: in, in Pierre, South Dakota.
• 4:58
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 5:00
  ronaldwimberly: Well, that is a fraught… and the location is fraught.
• 5:05
  Tad Eggleston: Right, you know.
• 5:07
  ronaldwimberly: Good enough.
• 5:07
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why, like, I have all sorts of ideas, like, if we really wanna, like… have…
• 5:14
  Tad Eggleston: better representation. We need to actually pay attention to
• 5:19
  Tad Eggleston: Rebuilding some of the parts of the country that aren't
• 5:22
  Tad Eggleston: You know, whether it's… whether it's all the factory towns, or…
• 5:28
  Tad Eggleston: or all of the farm states. And it's not like this isn't something that has historical precedent, you know? Tennessee Valley Authority was one of the…
• 5:37
  Tad Eggleston: the New Deal programs brought electricity to all of Appalachia.
• 5:40
  Tad Eggleston: And…
• 5:42
  Tad Eggleston: Did they appreciate it enough in terms of realizing the Democrats brought them electricity? No, but it changed that part of the country a lot!
• 5:51
  ronaldwimberly: There needs to be a real,
• 5:54
  ronaldwimberly: go. A lot of hard, a hard…
• 5:57
  ronaldwimberly: hard decisions to make, and and a… Yeah.
• 6:00
  ronaldwimberly: you know, examining… Sustainably, what it looks like to live on this… Planet.
• 6:09
  ronaldwimberly: And how we live on it.
• 6:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 6:12
  ronaldwimberly: Part and parcel with what you're talking about, and… It's kind of upsetting.
• 6:18
  ronaldwimberly: To be in the back half of the game, Needing to, like, organize
• 6:25
  ronaldwimberly: Our strategy around that way of thinking.
• 6:28
  ronaldwimberly: And just having the crazy theater Deadly theater.
• 6:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 6:34
  ronaldwimberly: living through that… that we're living through right now. It's kind of, you know…
• 6:38
  ronaldwimberly: It could be demoralizing, but we don't have time to even be demoralized. It's not a time to be… we must be, yeah.
• 6:47
  Tad Eggleston: For me, as a student of history as well, it's just infuriating to be able to go, yeah, no, this problem is not new. Many of the solutions for it are not new either. We've just been arguing about it for 100 years.
• 7:03
  ronaldwimberly: And now we have… well, we have problems maybe that aren't new, but are newly realized.
• 7:08
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 7:09
  ronaldwimberly: That we, you know, that…
• 7:11
  Tad Eggleston: or stop.
• 7:12
  ronaldwimberly: It's hard to go.
• 7:12
  Tad Eggleston: over. Right.
• 7:13
  ronaldwimberly: choir.
• 7:15
  ronaldwimberly: you know, require, creative solutions, you know? So…
• 7:21
  Tad Eggleston: But that's not as much fun.
• 7:23
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah.
• 7:24
  Tad Eggleston: As, as, as talking about your, your new venture.
• 7:27
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, not doing any of that work.
• 7:31
  Tad Eggleston: Because I was super excited when I saw it initially.
• 7:36
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 7:36
  Tad Eggleston: And then, even more excited when I got to… when you announced the Kickstarter, because Lab Zero is the only one that I don't have a physical copy of.
• 7:46
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, dope.
• 7:47
  ronaldwimberly: We knew, we knew that we'd have some people who would benefit from
• 7:53
  ronaldwimberly: reprinting a lot of that material. Of course, it's gonna be…
• 7:57
  ronaldwimberly: It's gonna be in a different, it's gonna be designed differently, and it's gonna be in the company of a lot of other new stuff, which…
• 8:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 8:04
  ronaldwimberly: You reminded me…
• 8:06
  ronaldwimberly: of a review that I want to do, though I'm not gonna say exactly what it is right now, because…
• 8:10
  ronaldwimberly: I'm… I'm hustling to get what I need to get done, done. And if I have time, there's this one thing that I would like to talk about in the newspaper.
• 8:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 8:20
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, up to the… up to the minute.
• 8:22
  ronaldwimberly: We're working, folks.
• 8:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 8:24
  ronaldwimberly: They'll bring you some…
• 8:25
  Tad Eggleston: Wild Signal, tell me about Wild Signal, and then we'll get into lab.
• 8:29
  ronaldwimberly: Sure, sure. So, Wild Signal is…
• 8:33
  ronaldwimberly: a company me and my buddy Mike Roush, put together, two…
• 8:39
  ronaldwimberly: Essentially put out dope shit, like, the type of stuff…
• 8:44
  ronaldwimberly: That we're excited about seeing in the world, what…
• 8:50
  ronaldwimberly: Kind of what, motivated me Was… a couple years ago.
• 8:56
  ronaldwimberly: going through a rough patch, and not because I'm like, yo, I mean… I don't…
• 9:04
  ronaldwimberly: I'm a… I'm a decent cartoonist. I could be less… I could be less decent than I am and still probably get along okay.
• 9:12
  ronaldwimberly: But the fact is, is just, like, there wasn't… there aren't really a lot of spaces for an artist like me, and I don't mean, you know, probably the more obvious,
• 9:23
  ronaldwimberly: reasons, but, like, just, you know…
• 9:27
  ronaldwimberly: We wanted to make something where artists who take a chance
• 9:31
  ronaldwimberly: And people who are a little bit…
• 9:33
  ronaldwimberly: You know, who are serious about what they do, but maybe a little bit, you know,
• 9:39
  ronaldwimberly: On the margin, right?
• 9:42
  ronaldwimberly: a home for them, hopefully, you know what I mean? We're starting small, it's just the two of us, but that's our ambition, you know what I mean? Like, so…
• 9:51
  ronaldwimberly: And it's been, like, it's been, like, a generation or two
• 9:55
  ronaldwimberly: since something like that has really broken. I think right now, though, it's looking good. I know Uncivilized is doing some dope stuff, Piao is back, you know what I mean?
• 10:07
  Tad Eggleston: Tom on, uncivilized as…
• 10:09
  ronaldwimberly: Yo, that's… that's the homie. Like, we're…
• 10:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 10:12
  ronaldwimberly: No, I think we, you know, me and Tom, I think we got a similar way of thinking
• 10:18
  ronaldwimberly: In terms of a lot of things. I think probably the difference between,
• 10:26
  ronaldwimberly: while Signal and, you know, those other publishers is that
• 10:30
  ronaldwimberly: Maybe, like, our interests are… or how our interests manifest, in terms of how broad they are in a media sense, are a little different.
• 10:40
  ronaldwimberly: Or they're just a little broader, I would say.
• 10:43
  ronaldwimberly: We're, we're putting out, we put out a vinyl, for Julian Glander's project, his feature animated film last year. Did you see that.
• 10:53
  ronaldwimberly: Yep, yep. We got another…
• 10:56
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't ordered that one yet, but I did get the album package with… for… for the Kickstarter.
• 11:02
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, dope. Yeah, yeah. Which is, like…
• 11:04
  Tad Eggleston: Is… Saul Williams? No.
• 11:07
  ronaldwimberly: Oh my god, bro, that record has some bangers on it, man.
• 11:11
  Tad Eggleston: Can't wait.
• 11:11
  ronaldwimberly: The whole thing goes. But, like, yeah, there's a few that I'm just like, man…
• 11:16
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, it's wild because, like.
• 11:19
  ronaldwimberly: when Saul first talked to me about the Martin Luther King project, he talked to me about it in regards to music.
• 11:28
  ronaldwimberly: that he heard, like, a record that he saw on the wall of Burundi drums in a place he was staying. And I was like, yo, when I heard that, I was like, wow. Because…
• 11:39
  ronaldwimberly: Burundi drums are legendary, you know, like, if you're, like, post-punk, you know, like, just kind of what it did to punk music.
• 11:48
  ronaldwimberly: And, like, Bow Wow Wow, Adam Ant, you know, so, and how it influenced
• 11:55
  ronaldwimberly: the… the medium. So, yeah, like, from that moment, I was like, wow, this is gonna be crazy. And it's, like, it's crazy, because I think it's, like, it's his second record that he's explored that with. So, we're, we're really proud to be putting that out, and like I said, so, like, we're looking to do that.
• 12:11
  ronaldwimberly: We got another, release that we'll be announcing, in a couple weeks.
• 12:19
  ronaldwimberly: And we're looking to do other media projects, so, and we'll have more on that as the year rolls out to announce that we're working on right now, so…
• 12:29
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah. So…
• 12:33
  Tad Eggleston: And this is why I get excited when you do things, because I… I…
• 12:40
  Tad Eggleston: One of my troubles, fitting in and finding my place throughout my life is I like
• 12:47
  Tad Eggleston: too much of too many things. Like, and you're one of the handful of people that will, like.
• 12:54
  Tad Eggleston: And we're not, like, always on the same set, you know, we don't have the same reading list and the same…
• 13:00
  Tad Eggleston: listening list, we've got crossover, But what's similar is they're really, really broad and hard to define.
• 13:10
  ronaldwimberly: Man, I just gotta, you know, I,
• 13:14
  ronaldwimberly: I have something that, you know, we're all… we're all the children of our age, right? And I think…
• 13:20
  ronaldwimberly: Another thing about Wild Signal, I don't know, man, like, I just thought about, like, what do I have?
• 13:30
  ronaldwimberly: what do I have to offer, right? So, like, I was talking to Fred Carrasco's another cartoonist, or artist, I should say, who I… who I was talking to the other night.
• 13:42
  ronaldwimberly: And… which is the morning, because we're on two opposite sides of the planet.
• 13:46
  ronaldwimberly: And I was like, you know.
• 13:48
  Tad Eggleston: You mean not the drug bearing? Because I put Fred Carrasco in.
• 13:52
  ronaldwimberly: No, no, no, Freddie, Freddy Roscoe, yeah, yeah, he's…
• 13:57
  ronaldwimberly: He did Gleam for, he did Gleam, which was released from Piao.
• 14:01
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
• 14:03
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:04
  Tad Eggleston: Now I know who we're talking about.
• 14:05
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:06
  Tad Eggleston: It's just always weird when you pump in somebody's name and you get somebody that's way different.
• 14:12
  ronaldwimberly: I love that for him, though. I love that for him.
• 14:17
  ronaldwimberly: But, yeah, we gotta make our names, I guess.
• 14:21
  Tad Eggleston: I had a friend who had to change, you know, before he left social media entirely, had to change his social media presence to, like, literally say, not that one, and link to his Wikipedia page, rather than the Wikipedia page of the horrible person who also had his name.
• 14:40
  ronaldwimberly: That's a few of those. There's a lot of those.
• 14:43
  ronaldwimberly: I once got my… yeah, I once got my website hijacked by, like, a porn site.
• 14:49
  ronaldwimberly: Because, in a different language, one of my own old nomme de plumes sounded like something else.
• 14:56
  ronaldwimberly: Fred, I was talking to him, I was like, oh, well, the reason why I did this is because…
• 15:00
  ronaldwimberly: like, watching Fred come out, and being like… there was this… one time,
• 15:10
  ronaldwimberly: A couple cartoonists came up.
• 15:12
  ronaldwimberly: from, Richmond, Virginia.
• 15:16
  ronaldwimberly: Chris Kindred, Richie Polk, Shannon White, right?
• 15:22
  ronaldwimberly: came by, To, visit me, and they… they talked to me about…
• 15:28
  ronaldwimberly: they had seen my work, and that was the first time I realized I was, like, unk, you know what I mean? Now I'm OG. But at the time, I was like, oh, damn, you know…
• 15:37
  ronaldwimberly: And I guess it kind of hit me, I was like, wow, well…
• 15:40
  ronaldwimberly: if we keep going, and say we have a little bit, a modicum of success, like, we survive, like, or I survive, like, my second act in comics, like, will I have anything? Will it be any easier for, like, cartoonists who are, you know.
• 15:58
  ronaldwimberly: of a similar variety, or, like, having a similar kind of path or struggle than what I had.
• 16:04
  ronaldwimberly: And… I would say…
• 16:08
  ronaldwimberly: that's why I'm hoping my trajectory will change. Like, with Lab, Lab originally was trying to do that kind of work, you know what I mean? Where it's like, okay, well, what's some of the technology or thoughts that I have is, you know.
• 16:22
  ronaldwimberly: what's the point in, like, you know, can I… can I put out any information that could…
• 16:28
  ronaldwimberly: connect other cartoonists to the work and to community in a way, right? Even in a small way, right? Like, a publication that was both, like, something to…
• 16:40
  ronaldwimberly: read, but could also be, like, a site for people to connect around, you know what I mean? Like, so…
• 16:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 16:46
  ronaldwimberly: And while Signal, I think, you know, is more working in that way, it's like, okay, well.
• 16:52
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, we wanna put out dope shit, we wanna put out a bunch of my stuff.
• 16:55
  ronaldwimberly: But, like, we also want to be a place where we can, like, kind of…
• 16:59
  ronaldwimberly: Cultivate and create a space for other people
• 17:03
  ronaldwimberly: And hopefully one of many, right? Like, hopefully one of many different, you know, new ventures, like publishers I mentioned before. Because, like, right now, it seems kind of…
• 17:14
  ronaldwimberly: I don't know, it's a moment where people are being…
• 17:17
  ronaldwimberly: Asked to relate to the world around them in a way that's not…
• 17:23
  ronaldwimberly: particularly healthy. You mentioned your broad taste, like.
• 17:28
  ronaldwimberly: I come from an era, like, where…
• 17:30
  ronaldwimberly: you had to dig for stuff, and when you found it, you really appreciated it. So it wasn't any sort of…
• 17:39
  ronaldwimberly: particular, like, individual…
• 17:42
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not that much younger than you, Ronald.
• 17:45
  ronaldwimberly: No, I'm not saying…
• 17:46
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that.
• 17:48
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, right?
• 17:49
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, boy.
• 17:50
  Tad Eggleston: I pretty much also came from this era.
• 17:54
  ronaldwimberly: Right, but this is what I'm saying, so, like, how do we… how do we,
• 17:59
  ronaldwimberly: And, like, like I was saying, it's not anything particular to myself, like, it's not, what's the word I'm looking for?
• 18:07
  ronaldwimberly: There's nothing particular to myself that made… may… helped me to cultivate that, but it was just the world that we lived in, right? And kind of, like, the people that we were around, and the fact that, like.
• 18:18
  ronaldwimberly: oh, shit, well, maybe it cost you… I don't know how much it cost to get, like, a CD or a record back then, it's been so long.
• 18:27
  ronaldwimberly: But it cost a lot, so you were careful. And maybe you went to the record store, and you talked to the guy behind the counter, or you talked to, you know, the woman at, you know, downtown at the bookstore, because you wanted to know some of.
• 18:41
  Tad Eggleston: You read the music magazines, or zines, or whatever.
• 18:45
  ronaldwimberly: The community could help put you on, and, like, there were people who kinda…
• 18:49
  ronaldwimberly: we were all sharing, first of all, Seaport DRM, you know what I mean? Like, with the mixtapes, we were selling, you know.
• 18:57
  ronaldwimberly: Giving them to each other, you know, so…
• 19:01
  ronaldwimberly: Good, it was deep.
• 19:02
  Tad Eggleston: I think, actually, like, that this kinda…
• 19:06
  Tad Eggleston: Ties back to what we were talking about when we got going off-air.
• 19:10
  Tad Eggleston: And the difference between listening to somebody talk about something or reading a review, And, and I think…
• 19:17
  Tad Eggleston: Part of why we're seeing podcasts come back, why we're seeing zines come back, is that when it's no longer hard to
• 19:26
  Tad Eggleston: find something. Like, going out and, like, it took me 2 years to find Frank Miller's whole Daredevil run, because it hadn't been collected yet. And of course, like, 4 months after I found it all, it got collected, because that was… that was the era that I lived in.
• 19:45
  Tad Eggleston: I still haven't found all of some things, but now I don't have to necessarily find them to read them. It's now a search, like, because I want it, you know?
• 20:00
  Tad Eggleston: But…
• 20:01
  Tad Eggleston: Having that connection of listening to somebody else talk about it, having that connection of having read a great review,
• 20:11
  Tad Eggleston: having that connection of… I mean, I think… I think the local comic shops that are leaning more into being…
• 20:17
  Tad Eggleston: Meeting places are doing better right now, because being able to talk to people about
• 20:23
  Tad Eggleston: oh, have you read this? Let me show you this. You know, I'm glad that I don't see nearly as many signs in comic shops about them not being libraries anymore.
• 20:34
  ronaldwimberly: Whoa, was that his name?
• 20:36
  Tad Eggleston: It was. When I was young, there would be, like.
• 20:39
  Tad Eggleston: The, the, the sign, you know.
• 20:42
  ronaldwimberly: Right.
• 20:43
  Tad Eggleston: This is not a library, you want to read it, buy it. And I'm like, what?
• 20:48
  ronaldwimberly: I've seen it in magazine shops sometimes, you know.
• 20:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 20:51
  ronaldwimberly: Well, I never see the sign, but, like, you might hear it, you might hear it come from me. Right.
• 20:57
  ronaldwimberly: You know, that's unfortunate, but, like, now we're in a point where it's like…
• 21:01
  ronaldwimberly: I mean, if you love it, and if you're into it, we're all in it together, because, like,
• 21:08
  ronaldwimberly: We want to see the medium survive.
• 21:10
  ronaldwimberly: And I… I think… To get back to the… the element of digging, or, like, kind of…
• 21:18
  ronaldwimberly: Not, like, scarcity… But rather…
• 21:22
  Tad Eggleston: Sharing the experience, because part of digging is that you're…
• 21:27
  Tad Eggleston: Going different places and meeting different people as you're looking for something.
• 21:33
  ronaldwimberly: True.
• 21:34
  ronaldwimberly: But also, I think, like, at a certain point, when… Everything is available
• 21:42
  ronaldwimberly: it produces a way of relating to the material, and so I feel like we've gone past, like, if you think about, like, the early aughts.
• 21:52
  ronaldwimberly: the internet was… you'd be out there, right? I used to do this thing where, I would look up
• 21:59
  ronaldwimberly: a record cover, or, like, I might find,
• 22:04
  ronaldwimberly: a JPEG of a record that I had… I didn't have. And then I would image search that record cover.
• 22:12
  ronaldwimberly: And then that image search would take me to a blog that someone had of just, like.
• 22:18
  ronaldwimberly: Rare fucking hard bop, or, like, post-punk records or something.
• 22:24
  ronaldwimberly: and… you know…
• 22:27
  ronaldwimberly: before long, I was connected to, like, a FLAC file of that record, you know what I mean?
• 22:33
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 22:34
  ronaldwimberly: So…
• 22:34
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 22:35
  ronaldwimberly: And that was a moment.
• 22:36
  Tad Eggleston: I loved… I loved the era of the music blogs.
• 22:40
  ronaldwimberly: That's right. Everything is…
• 22:41
  Tad Eggleston: Because that was also the era where I was changing diapers, so it was the era that I had the least money to spend on things like music and comics.
• 22:51
  ronaldwimberly: I mean, a lot of these bands weren't even around no more, you know what I mean? Like, there's, you know…
• 22:55
  ronaldwimberly: But, I think… so, that created…
• 22:58
  ronaldwimberly: You know, and that was before, sort of, like, the enclosure of…
• 23:02
  ronaldwimberly: The internet and blogs by, like, say, you know, at least
• 23:06
  ronaldwimberly: largely by, like, something like a Facebook or a Instagram.
• 23:12
  ronaldwimberly: But once that happened, Once, like, that information was there, and people had kind of, like, Become conditioned to…
• 23:21
  ronaldwimberly: Relating to the information in that way.
• 23:24
  ronaldwimberly: Things changed.
• 23:26
  ronaldwimberly: And the value… like, the spigot was open.
• 23:31
  ronaldwimberly: And now everyone's being conditioned to just, like, a continuous stream of information, and I'm… and when I say information, I don't mean, like, truth, or false, or, like, beauty, or anything, I just mean information.
• 23:45
  Tad Eggleston: Just data.
• 23:46
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, just data. Just data. And in this world, like…
• 23:52
  ronaldwimberly: To move… to take ones out of that, is, like, I think…
• 23:57
  ronaldwimberly: I say a radical act, I mean it, like, in the most, you know, fundamental way of saying it. It's like, you're getting back to, kind of, like, the choice of what you see and how you relate to things, you know? So…
• 24:10
  ronaldwimberly: I think that's what, kind of, this physical media does, that's what, kind of, like, you know, even as creators, like.
• 24:18
  ronaldwimberly: making things, it's how we relate to materials and to the people we make materials for. I think it's important. That's what we're about. So…
• 24:27
  ronaldwimberly: I think it's important.
• 24:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 24:29
  Tad Eggleston: And, and I, I…
• 24:32
  Tad Eggleston: I appreciate that. I mean, I don't think it's impossible. Like, I… I spend a lot of energy
• 24:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, not a lot of energy daily, but a lot of energy… overall, like.
• 24:45
  Tad Eggleston: Curating what information comes at me.
• 24:47
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 24:48
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I'm more of a… of a newsletter guy than a social media guy. I… I…
• 24:56
  Tad Eggleston: kind of have specific ways that I… that I interact with each newsletter, that sort of thing.
• 25:03
  Tad Eggleston: But even so, like, there are parts of… like, I'm still… still looking for the way to stay up.
• 25:11
  Tad Eggleston: On cool new music the way that my curated set of music blogs used to.
• 25:19
  Tad Eggleston: Y-you know what I mean?
• 25:20
  ronaldwimberly: Ugh.
• 25:21
  Tad Eggleston: Because that's the other thing, is that… The ecosystem just always shifts.
• 25:28
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, when we were kids, radio was actually a decent way to find out about a lot of, you know, because there was at least one station that played stuff that you'd never heard of. Right.
• 25:40
  Tad Eggleston: That was stuff that you liked.
• 25:42
  ronaldwimberly: Right.
• 25:42
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 25:43
  ronaldwimberly: And there were DJs who… there were DJs, full stop.
• 25:46
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 25:46
  ronaldwimberly: But there were DJs who had some… yeah, they had some…
• 25:50
  ronaldwimberly: You know, they had a embodied…
• 25:52
  Tad Eggleston: Control over what they played.
• 25:54
  ronaldwimberly: And, like, yeah, and they, they made.
• 25:56
  Tad Eggleston: It wasn't, here's the list of songs that must be played during your show, and if you can squee… you know, you've got 15 minutes to either talk or play other music.
• 26:08
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah. So… and I think what they've managed to do Is to apply that sort of…
• 26:17
  ronaldwimberly: metric or sort of, mechanism to everything, wherein, like, you know, so you don't have any sort of…
• 26:28
  ronaldwimberly: what mediates your experience is… or what connects you is an algorithm, right? And the algorithm is around, you know, at the most…
• 26:39
  ronaldwimberly: at best, it's just giving you more of what it thinks you already wanted. At worst, it's giving you what some… what someone has kind of set to give you, you know what I mean? Like, within a… and also, there's overlap, because within a narrower and narrower range, you know?
• 26:59
  ronaldwimberly: And so, like, yeah.
• 27:01
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I know personally the algorithm is way more likely to give me something that I already have than that thing that I go…
• 27:08
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I've never heard of that, but it looks cool.
• 27:11
  ronaldwimberly: So we're here, we're dancing around, like, in shitification or whatever, but… cause, like, I remember when we first…
• 27:17
  ronaldwimberly: got into it. I remember the first couple years of, like, not on Spotify anymore, get off Spotify, everybody.
• 27:24
  ronaldwimberly: The first couple years I was on Spotify.
• 27:27
  ronaldwimberly: I would notice something. I'd be like, okay, so I would look at a, I'm listening to a record, and it was all… always Mexico City. I'd be like, wow, okay, someone else is listening to this in Mexico City.
• 27:39
  ronaldwimberly: then I would go and look and see what they're listening to, and boom, I'm getting, like, new music, or, like, some of the suggestions were actually good.
• 27:48
  ronaldwimberly: But within a couple years, I was like, hmm…
• 27:51
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, this ain'… I don't know if it was just a matter of…
• 27:56
  ronaldwimberly: Control mechanisms, or if it was just the amount of data
• 28:01
  ronaldwimberly: That caused it to kind of, like, smooth its edges off like that, and become, you know, less useful, right? Like, is it…
• 28:10
  Tad Eggleston: It's…
• 28:11
  ronaldwimberly: Common denominator, or is it, like…
• 28:13
  Tad Eggleston: Well, one of the… I think it depends on who it's for, because it's definitely going to be less useful for you and me, who are desperately looking for that obscure thing, because we know all of the things. But the person who knows.
• 28:31
  ronaldwimberly: A bit.
• 28:32
  Tad Eggleston: band, but doesn't know the 5 other bands that, like, you or I would automatically
• 28:37
  Tad Eggleston: Like, one of the ways I think of it sometimes is, you know how
• 28:41
  Tad Eggleston: Crowds always sing in tune.
• 28:44
  Tad Eggleston: Because they even each other out. The bigger the crowd, the more likely it is to be spot-on on tune.
• 28:50
  Tad Eggleston: It's kind of how algorithms work. Like, all the feeling gets taken away, all of the… all of the…
• 28:59
  Tad Eggleston: All of the quirks and imperfections that make it interesting get taken away, but if you just want the thing that will give you blank.
• 29:09
  Tad Eggleston: It's become perfected, but that… but then if you were the one that was looking for that thing that would help you find…
• 29:17
  Tad Eggleston: The imperfections, or the shoot-offs, you don't have that tool anymore.
• 29:22
  ronaldwimberly: I got you, but here's why I'm suspicious of, like… I'm a little suspicious of it.
• 29:27
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm certain that there's also some monkeying around on the corporate side.
• 29:33
  Tad Eggleston: I meant, this is why…
• 29:34
  ronaldwimberly: It would become better.
• 29:35
  Tad Eggleston: Bad, even if there wasn't monkeying around on the.
• 29:39
  ronaldwimberly: No, but I'm saying, like, because, look, if it's… what I'm saying is, like, let's say if even I'm… that's why I live in New York City, right? Because it's like, even if I think I'm unique.
• 29:49
  ronaldwimberly: Like, come on, bro, like, 8 million people? You know what I mean? You're gonna… it's…
• 29:54
  ronaldwimberly: I'm sure there's somebody… there's somebody in Queens right now having our same conversation. It's just… there's so many, right? Like, and so, that's why I think, you know.
• 30:06
  Tad Eggleston: If not Queens, maybe Jakarta.
• 30:09
  ronaldwimberly: Right, right, yeah.
• 30:09
  Tad Eggleston: Or Buenos Aires.
• 30:12
  ronaldwimberly: potato, like, we got a lot of, you know, like, we got, we got a lot of different people here. I'm just saying, like, I think if there's that many users.
• 30:22
  ronaldwimberly: And, like, as, you know, as weird as your taste may be. Like, the…
• 30:29
  ronaldwimberly: and maybe this is a failure, like you said, of the algorithm. I mean, it's not that it's either or, it could be both.
• 30:36
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, technically, I don't think it's a failure of the algorithm. I think it's the algorithm working exactly the way it's supposed to. It just means it won't work for me the better it gets.
• 30:43
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, well.
• 30:45
  ronaldwimberly: That's a… that's a… that's a way of thinking about better, you know? But… so… but what happens, like, let's say if…
• 30:53
  ronaldwimberly: There's a natural way of… Say, like, community being, like, the opposite version of that.
• 31:01
  ronaldwimberly: I think… What's been proven, at least in my lived experience, is like.
• 31:08
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, a person who works at a bookshop, or, like, at a record store.
• 31:16
  ronaldwimberly: works really well for that, you know what I mean? Like…
• 31:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 31:21
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, that's my favorite thing to do at either a record store or…
• 31:25
  Tad Eggleston: comic shop, if I'm a customer, I want them to, like, sell me something, and I mean really sell me something.
• 31:35
  Tad Eggleston: Find something that I don't know, that you love, and sell it to me. And if I'm working there, like, my favorite thing to do is help you find that thing that you didn't know you loved.
• 31:46
  Tad Eggleston: Or get you into that thing that you never would have picked up if I hadn't put it in your hands.
• 31:53
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 31:55
  ronaldwimberly: I used to work at a record store on… in St. Mark's. I haven't talked… I don't know if I talked to you about this last time.
• 32:01
  Tad Eggleston: if you have.
• 32:02
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, I've worked at this record called… record store called St. Mark's Sounds. Like, we're known for having… probably, if you're a record collector in the tri-State, and you pick up used records, you may still, every once in a while, pick up a record that has a St. Mark's Sounds,
• 32:17
  ronaldwimberly: sticker on it, because our stickers notoriously
• 32:21
  ronaldwimberly: the most stickiest. I don't know…
• 32:25
  Tad Eggleston: I'm off.
• 32:25
  ronaldwimberly: They just knocked them off, bro, like… I've seen… I've got records in my collection with other stickers on top of the same article.
• 32:33
  Tad Eggleston: St.
• 32:34
  ronaldwimberly: The trademark sound sticker is not coming on.
• 32:37
  ronaldwimberly: So… but… I remember… I remember just kind of like, how do… you know…
• 32:43
  ronaldwimberly: one of the things that was great about it is, like, you get there, and we're sitting there the dead of winter or whatever, like, after, after, after Christmas, and, like, you know, not a lot of people are coming in. I was there, like, right after 9-11, so, like, there wasn't a lot of foot traffic in,
• 33:00
  ronaldwimberly: the East Village at that point.
• 33:03
  ronaldwimberly: You're not as much, you know,
• 33:06
  ronaldwimberly: And, yeah, we would just listen to the music. And you would have, you know, so, like, I was the kid, I was kind of, like, underground… underground hip-hop.
• 33:16
  ronaldwimberly: Jazz, and, like, first, you know, first wave punk.
• 33:21
  ronaldwimberly: And then, like, I had another guy there who was like.
• 33:24
  ronaldwimberly: He was a metal guy, you know, he's like.
• 33:28
  ronaldwimberly: He's a metal guy, and like,
• 33:31
  ronaldwimberly: kind of kitschy stuff, like, he loved Kiss, and… and then, you know, we had, like, another guy was just hard hip-hop, and then another… and then Molly was also a metal person. And we just, like, share each other's music. And, you know, we'd go and dig, and, like, we'd get…
• 33:46
  ronaldwimberly: we'd get, you know, people would come in from the music companies, I guess they're all probably out of New York or closed now, but… and they would sell, like, their demos and stuff, we'd buy their demos and put them in the bin. That's when I first found, like.
• 34:00
  ronaldwimberly: King Ghidorah, like, Doom's project, it was in, like, the… the demo bin, and it's just like, you picked it up and you put it on, and it's like, that was kind of the first wave. That's like the… that's like the macrobiome of the culture, right? Like, you know,
• 34:15
  ronaldwimberly: Joan Jett would come in, like, people would come in, right? Like, and we would… then there would be some kid who's, like, hooky from high school, or, like, some, you know, dad who's coming in, you know, trying to, you know.
• 34:29
  ronaldwimberly: see what's cool happening with music now, you know? And, like, that, I think, was very important. I think the internet was synthesizing some of that at some point.
• 34:39
  ronaldwimberly: And I think, we should be doing the work to maintain that sort of ecosystem, you know what I mean? Like,
• 34:49
  ronaldwimberly: And that's what I think I'm… I'm doing my… I'm figuring out, I'm testing to see if this is what we're doing. We'll see!
• 34:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
• 34:57
  ronaldwimberly: We'll see, you know?
• 34:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think… I think everybody who… takes the time… To do things… small.
• 35:09
  Tad Eggleston: and about… Doing it, rather than just profiting from it.
• 35:14
  Tad Eggleston: Is… is part of that ecosystem and is making some sort of wave.
• 35:20
  ronaldwimberly: It's redefining profit, too, right? Right. Because, like, you know.
• 35:25
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 35:26
  ronaldwimberly: Know what I mean? Like, in what way?
• 35:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, no, I make that argument regularly. Like, is dollars and cents the only way to define value?
• 35:39
  Tad Eggleston: Is it the only thing we expect in return for our time? You know,
• 35:45
  Tad Eggleston: I've chosen a lot of careers in my life that aren't the ones that make the most money, but they… they give me a sense of purpose.
• 35:53
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 35:54
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I lose money to make this podcast, but if, like, 10 more people read comics because of it…
• 36:01
  Tad Eggleston: it's… it's worth all the time, and frankly, it's worth all the time just because I get to have cool conversations.
• 36:08
  ronaldwimberly: So what's excited you most recently? You have a recent discovery?
• 36:12
  Tad Eggleston: Hmm.
• 36:15
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it's the end of the school year, so I've been slammed.
• 36:20
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah.
• 36:21
  Tad Eggleston: Hmm.
• 36:24
  Tad Eggleston: So, a lot, a lot, a lot of the stuff that I… well, yeah, actually, no, there was a band that I discovered…
• 36:32
  Tad Eggleston: I have to, like, I don't know them well enough yet that I, like, automatically come up with the name. I, like, can kind of hear the music.
• 36:41
  Tad Eggleston: But I… but I… but I… I… how do I describe them? I describe them as, like, modest mouse meets,
• 36:51
  Tad Eggleston: the descendants?
• 36:53
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, okay.
• 36:54
  Tad Eggleston: Cause they're all, like, 2-minute songs that have that…
• 36:59
  Tad Eggleston: Intelligence to them, but they're not… they're not sung as urgently and fast as, you know, they've got more of the laid-back, until you're like, wait a minute, it's a minute 30, and you just got done.
• 37:11
  ronaldwimberly: What, where are they from?
• 37:14
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know where they're from. Like, one of the things I do is I get Pitchfork's 10 Best Albums of the week.
• 37:23
  Tad Eggleston: email every week, and, like, go through and go, that looks interesting, and just throw it in my playlist and try to make a point of actually listening to it. It's called, Media Puzzle is the name of the group, and New Racehorse is the name of the album.
• 37:41
  ronaldwimberly: That's a great… that's a great record, man.
• 37:43
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't know where they're from, actually.
• 37:47
  Tad Eggleston: Because I haven't gotten that deep into them yet.
• 37:50
  Tad Eggleston: But I've also been, like, Keith Jarrett's my go-to when…
• 37:56
  Tad Eggleston: when I need calm music in the hallways, and the end of the school year is when I need lots of calm music in the hallways. I'm the teacher that puts on the noise-canceling headphones to go through the…
• 38:11
  Tad Eggleston: So I've been listening to old Keith Jarrett, so that's… that's not, like, new and exciting, but… Love it.
• 38:17
  ronaldwimberly: evil again.
• 38:19
  Tad Eggleston: to Devo?
• 38:20
  ronaldwimberly: Yes.
• 38:21
  Tad Eggleston: I like Devo.
• 38:22
  ronaldwimberly: Because I think Devo, I think they… they might be still on their final tour, or whatever.
• 38:27
  Tad Eggleston: I think so.
• 38:27
  ronaldwimberly: Great conversation.
• 38:32
  ronaldwimberly: on that show. What's the name of the show? It's a great podcast with, luxury and,
• 38:39
  ronaldwimberly: They… one song.
• 38:41
  ronaldwimberly: And so, they had Mother's… yeah, they had Diva One.
• 38:44
  ronaldwimberly: And, like, so, I, I was listening to them talk about, Whip It.
• 38:52
  ronaldwimberly: And speaking of sounds, I remember when…
• 38:54
  ronaldwimberly: One of the guys that sounds was like.
• 38:56
  ronaldwimberly: he's like, that's… they don't really have no good music. Then the other guy was like, oh, yeah, no, you gotta listen to all these records. And… this cat…
• 39:05
  ronaldwimberly: Good dude. He had lots of tapes. He had taped the shows a lot, so he would make money back in the day selling them on eBay and making t-shirts and stuff. But yeah, so he put me on the Devo.
• 39:17
  ronaldwimberly: that's one of my favorite bands, you know, like, so I've been listening to them a lot, again.
• 39:23
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you brought up the tapes that, like, one of the rabbit holes that I'm looking forward to going down this summer
• 39:32
  Tad Eggleston: is… there's a guy from Chicago named Adam Jacobs that…
• 39:38
  Tad Eggleston: like, became known as the Chicago Taper. Like, so much so that bands that normally didn't allow taping, like, venues that didn't normally allow taping, would let him in and get him to good spots, blah blah blah. So he's got, like, a 10,000 tape collection.
• 39:58
  Tad Eggleston: That somebody… I want to say, my wife sent me the article, I think, from the Chicago Reader about it, but Internet Archive is now.
• 40:07
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, wow! Dope.
• 40:09
  Tad Eggleston: Is now going through and remastering them all.
• 40:13
  ronaldwimberly: That's dope.
• 40:14
  Tad Eggleston: putting them up. So there's only… there's only, like, 2700 up now, but we've got, like, Nirvana in 1989, REM in 86.
• 40:25
  ronaldwimberly: Crazy.
• 40:25
  Tad Eggleston: here in 84.
• 40:28
  Tad Eggleston: Depeche Mode at the Aragon Ballroom in 85, Lowe, Television.
• 40:35
  ronaldwimberly: blah.
• 40:36
  Tad Eggleston: Fugazi, Replacements.
• 40:39
  Tad Eggleston: These are just the bands that I recognize the names of off the top of my head. Godspeed You, Black Emperor.
• 40:45
  ronaldwimberly: This guy was outside.
• 40:48
  Tad Eggleston: No, he'd be inside the…
• 40:49
  ronaldwimberly: No, I'm just saying, he's in the streets.
• 40:53
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:54
  ronaldwimberly: He was, yeah, he was going to a lot of shows.
• 40:57
  Tad Eggleston: Sonic Youth at the Metro in 1988?
• 41:00
  ronaldwimberly: Crazy.
• 41:02
  ronaldwimberly: I'm looking for this show… I thought I saw it on YouTube about…
• 41:06
  ronaldwimberly: Man, probably over 10 years ago.
• 41:09
  ronaldwimberly: And it's to the point where I can't find it anymore, so I'm like, did I even see this? But I thought it was Yoko Ono doing mass production from Iggy Pops The Idiot. And I was like…
• 41:23
  ronaldwimberly: I swear to God I saw this, like, I swear to God, and I've been looking for it for, like, the last.
• 41:28
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, I was listening to Iggy Pop this week.
• 41:31
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, word, yeah, I listen… I listen to ADP all the time. I was listening to…
• 41:35
  Tad Eggleston: To, to, to, to, the…
• 41:39
  Tad Eggleston: Bowie remast… or the Bowie mix of raw power.
• 41:43
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think… I think…
• 41:49
  ronaldwimberly: Because I think on Bowie's, like, the vocals are higher.
• 41:53
  ronaldwimberly: I think the vocals are higher on Bowie's version.
• 41:56
  Tad Eggleston: Which was the song?
• 41:58
  ronaldwimberly: Raw, it's Raw Power, it's the one with Iggy on the cover, like…
• 42:03
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 42:03
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:04
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, I meant that you wanted the Yoko Ono.
• 42:07
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, yeah, it's Yoko Ono, mass production, that's from The Idiot.
• 42:11
  ronaldwimberly: It's the last crack on the Idiot record.
• 42:13
  Tad Eggleston: Because I did immediately find her with Iggy Pop doing Waiting for the D train.
• 42:20
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, no, no, no, no, I think I've heard that one. I think the one… and, like, I don't know, did I dream this? But it was just her, it wasn't with Iggy.
• 42:33
  ronaldwimberly: And I… I don't know, maybe I dreamt it, bro. Like, but I swear I heard this. If anybody listening…
• 42:39
  Tad Eggleston: I, I'm…
• 42:40
  ronaldwimberly: They find it…
• 42:41
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I'm falling down the rabbit hole a little bit right now, because I used to be really good at, like, my skills are a little bit atrophied, and the internet has changed, but I used to be the guy that if it existed.
• 42:56
  ronaldwimberly: I mean, yeah, you know, I… the things, it has… it has changed a lot. I… I found a new version of it, with Lydia Lunch.
• 43:09
  ronaldwimberly: And, the R. Gray Noise Quintet that I really like. Same song.
• 43:15
  ronaldwimberly: you know, and I… yeah, I went down a rabbit hole with Lydia Lunch last week. I was just into just a whole bunch of different projects with her, and with, like…
• 43:23
  ronaldwimberly: other, you know, her and other bands, and, like, I saw that she had recorded something At this,
• 43:30
  ronaldwimberly: club here that I would like to just start to go…
• 43:34
  ronaldwimberly: you know, let's see how… how great things go with the business, but like, yeah, if I can go out and go to this…
• 43:41
  ronaldwimberly: Bar TVI, which is great.
• 43:44
  ronaldwimberly: They have a… they have a great, whoever books their bands, like, they do a great job.
• 43:51
  ronaldwimberly: And just… That's what's great about New York City.
• 43:55
  Tad Eggleston: It's great about a number of cities, and then you just… for me, it's always, do I also then get over my own… own social anxiety and whatnot to go out? Like, half of it is, can I afford it?
• 44:11
  Tad Eggleston: And the other half is, okay, now that I can afford it, am I willing to go out and be in a crowd of strangers?
• 44:19
  ronaldwimberly: My… a friend of mine, a producer… She's started this initiative.
• 44:28
  ronaldwimberly: To get kids off… their foam.
• 44:34
  ronaldwimberly: Okay. And,
• 44:36
  ronaldwimberly: So we talk about these things, and it's… it's a good… that social… speaking of the social anxiety thing, I think one of the things that this, like, age of technology probably…
• 44:48
  ronaldwimberly: exacerbates, in that it gives us an easy out, is some things that are hard or difficult.
• 44:54
  ronaldwimberly: It kinda, like…
• 44:56
  ronaldwimberly: it helps us kind of go around. And, like, I'm not… you know, social anxiety is real, it's like a medical condition.
• 45:03
  ronaldwimberly: But… sometimes the difficulty, and I'm a person who… you wouldn't guess it from, like.
• 45:10
  ronaldwimberly: you know, I think I have a personality that I wear to do, like, public stuff.
• 45:16
  ronaldwimberly: But, like, once I get off of here, bro, I won't talk to anyone for, like, 3 days. You know what I mean? Like, that's how I operate. Like, I… if I have to talk to too many people.
• 45:24
  ronaldwimberly: If you ever see me at a convention, you can probably, if you look at me in my eyes, you will see I am shutting down, because, like, I've reached the threshold of my abilities. But it is good!
• 45:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 45:35
  ronaldwimberly: Fantastic.
• 45:35
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I would totally have guessed it. I did guess it. That was one of the reasons I knew that you were my people.
• 45:41
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, I can't woof.
• 45:45
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah.
• 45:47
  ronaldwimberly: It… yeah.
• 45:48
  ronaldwimberly: But it's rewarding. It's good to get out, and like… and it's easier for me to do it by myself sometimes, like, I'll go to the… the club, or… and I'll just…
• 45:59
  ronaldwimberly: sit by myself and enjoy the music. It's easier than having to, like, kind of even be.
• 46:05
  Tad Eggleston: Because then I don't have to meet anybody else's expectations.
• 46:08
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, exactly. And I can just…
• 46:11
  Tad Eggleston: There are two crowds that I do relatively well in.
• 46:15
  Tad Eggleston: Baseball games and, and concerts.
• 46:22
  Tad Eggleston: And both because, like, I have an above-average amount of knowledge most of the time, so if somebody tries to talk to me, I can…
• 46:31
  Tad Eggleston: Immediately pull up Enough to either interest or bore them doesn't necessarily even matter to me.
• 46:41
  Tad Eggleston: on topic… And B, I just love them so much that, like.
• 46:47
  Tad Eggleston: But with music, it's easier for me the more I know the band, so I've never been great at going out and seeing
• 46:53
  Tad Eggleston: new live music. I wish that I was. It's like a goal of mine as I get older. I know it sounds weird, like, I want to be the old dude at the club with all the…
• 47:04
  ronaldwimberly: Join us. Like, I love it. Like, the last… man, when you find a band, and it's crazy, because it's been a few years now.
• 47:12
  ronaldwimberly: since I found abandon, I'm like, alright.
• 47:15
  ronaldwimberly: this is, like, my shit. There was this… I went to see…
• 47:19
  ronaldwimberly: I went to see Melt Banana, and
• 47:24
  ronaldwimberly: there was a couple bands opening. Actually, there's another band that opened for Melt Banana that I also liked. Actually, that night, it was, like, all three bands I really liked, but one of them was this band out of, Rhode Island called Baby Baby Explorers.
• 47:37
  ronaldwimberly: Now, whenever they come to New York, I try to see this fucking band. The band is so good. And it's crazy when you go someplace, and you're in a room.
• 47:46
  ronaldwimberly: And you're just kind of like, oh, so this… I forget which…
• 47:50
  ronaldwimberly: What the name of this menu is, what?
• 47:52
  ronaldwimberly: It's got multiple rooms, and they're, like, acts playing together. So I go into this smallest space, and it's just, like, a bunch of people, and this band…
• 48:01
  Tad Eggleston: They use very interesting, Punctuation, too.
• 48:10
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, with the, I think they have… they might… they might be children of Deebo a little bit, right? But so I go into the space, and they're playing, and I'm like, wow, who are these people? I've never heard these people before, right? And…
• 48:26
  ronaldwimberly: yo, but what is this, though? Like, this is so good! And, like, so I copped the CD, you know what I mean? Like, and then, you know, it's like, wow, I never…
• 48:37
  ronaldwimberly: Like, I hadn't heard of them before that night. You know what I mean? Like, I hadn't… and the crazy thing is, I ended up riding my bike back to the Roxy to watch, Bram Stoker's Dracula. I didn't even… I didn't even see Melt Banana, which I've seen a bunch of times.
• 48:50
  ronaldwimberly: But I didn't even see the act, I ended up leaving to go watch a movie. I was… I felt so good about my experience that night, I was like, okay.
• 49:00
  ronaldwimberly: I came to see a show.
• 49:02
  ronaldwimberly: I saw a show.
• 49:04
  ronaldwimberly: Right. I'm like, I'm gonna go watch a movie now, right?
• 49:07
  Tad Eggleston: No, it is… I mean, again, I tend so much more towards the bands that I know pretty well when I'm going in, but it's always a treat to me when, like, their opening act blows me away.
• 49:19
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 49:21
  Tad Eggleston: you know, where, where, I mean, I, like, the oldest example of this,
• 49:28
  Tad Eggleston: is when I was in college, Squirrel Nut Zippers played on campus, so I went to see Squirrel Nut Zippers, but there was this pair of old blues men who called themselves T-Model Ford, that…
• 49:40
  Tad Eggleston: That opened for them, and while I still like squirrel nut zippers, I, like, have sought out way more T-Model Ford in the last 30 years than I…
• 49:51
  ronaldwimberly: They still aren't just…
• 49:52
  Tad Eggleston: these… I don't even know if they are, because it's been a while since I looked.
• 49:57
  Tad Eggleston: And I would almost be shocked if they were.
• 50:00
  Tad Eggleston: Stop life!
• 50:03
  Tad Eggleston: Man.
• 50:04
  Tad Eggleston: It sounds terrible to say, but they were the guys that had to sit in their chairs.
• 50:08
  ronaldwimberly: Yo, I mean, I love… they might outlive all of us, you never know.
• 50:12
  Tad Eggleston: That, nope, nope, passed away in 2013.
• 50:15
  ronaldwimberly: Wow, okay. Well, it's not a bad run, I guess.
• 50:18
  Tad Eggleston: James Louis Carter Ford, American blues musician who
• 50:22
  Tad Eggleston: performed under the name T-Model Ford.
• 50:25
  ronaldwimberly: Surely.
• 50:25
  Tad Eggleston: See, that's…
• 50:26
  Tad Eggleston: That's my other weird thing. I don't remember who I was talking about this recently. I have always…
• 50:33
  Tad Eggleston: like, I love to talk to artists.
• 50:36
  Tad Eggleston: But I don't, like, spend a lot… like, you ask me where bands are from, and I'm like, ugh, I don't know, that's not the type of research I do. I look for more music and listen to it and build a relationship with the music. I've never been that guy that's like, oh, I gotta learn everything about the person who makes this music. I think it's a mixture of, I'm afraid that I'll be disappointed in something, and…
• 50:59
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm just, like…
• 51:02
  Tad Eggleston: I've always been interested in just listening to more music. I love talking, like, if I ever get the opportunity to talk to the person who made the music.
• 51:09
  Tad Eggleston: That's a whole different thing.
• 51:11
  ronaldwimberly: You know, everybody has different ways of kind of, like.
• 51:15
  ronaldwimberly: engaging with something. Yeah. Also, for, like, at least for me, part of it is, like, how do I find
• 51:23
  ronaldwimberly: more of whatever the fuck this is, right? And I think, like…
• 51:29
  Tad Eggleston: Finding the scene is good, I'm gonna have to remember that, because that makes sense to me. Like, because how often do we think of music based on the locational scene that it came out of?
• 51:41
  ronaldwimberly: I mean, I… I think…
• 51:43
  ronaldwimberly: It's my… I don't know, like, I don't know how it works. I can only speak to… for me, it's like, alright, so…
• 51:51
  ronaldwimberly: if you start to listen to, I don't know, Porter's Head, right? Then you're like, oh, well, then you listen to Massive Attack, or whatever, and then you're like.
• 51:59
  ronaldwimberly: wait a minute, like, so all of these motherfuckers is like, you know, from one time or a period, and then it's like, okay, well, who was the drummer, and like, who ended up here, who ended up there? It's like, say if you were to pick up the gorillas and be like.
• 52:12
  ronaldwimberly: wow, I really like this Gorillaz record. Then you start to, like, look…
• 52:16
  Tad Eggleston: you go read Tank Girl and go, wait a minute.
• 52:19
  ronaldwimberly: Right. You know what I mean? But, like, you… you… but you start to see the network and how these people are related, right?
• 52:26
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 52:26
  ronaldwimberly: crazy. It's like, oh yeah, now you're listening to Blur, now you're listening to, like, you know, like, oh, who's this guy? It's like, alright, now I'm listening to, fucking, before you know it, you're listening to…
• 52:34
  ronaldwimberly: you know… any number, The Clash, you can listen to any number of bands, you know, like…
• 52:40
  ronaldwimberly: Africa, 80, you know what I mean? Like, you're listening to all types of shit. So, I think that's kind of where I got into it, and also, I think…
• 52:48
  Tad Eggleston: And that I do have happen. I will go down, like, the Wikipedia link rabbit hole, I'll look up the band just to find their members, and click on their members, and then see how many other things they…
• 53:02
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, it's.
• 53:02
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 53:03
  ronaldwimberly: It's a thing… when I first got into it, maybe was, like, when I was at the record store, and I'd be like… I think it was a big revelation for me.
• 53:12
  ronaldwimberly: how… Cool.
• 53:15
  ronaldwimberly: and punky.
• 53:17
  ronaldwimberly: like… not… New York or LA, but kind of like, you know, Athens, you know.
• 53:26
  Tad Eggleston: Athens.
• 53:26
  ronaldwimberly: You sin.
• 53:27
  Tad Eggleston: Rhode Island's got a real punk… punk scene.
• 53:30
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, like, all of these, like, I'm kinda like… I think that's what…
• 53:33
  Tad Eggleston: Liz Prince did a, used to do, like, a weekly…
• 53:38
  Tad Eggleston: And they've been collected, but, like, a weekly rock… Punk rock criticism.
• 53:46
  Tad Eggleston: out of Rhode Island.
• 53:51
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, you can even get… you can get Rhode Island Punk in… in… in… comic book form.
• 53:59
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, wow, okay.
• 53:59
  Tad Eggleston: Had to look it up.
• 54:03
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah.
• 54:05
  ronaldwimberly: But yeah, man, I think… I don't know. I think this is, a good.
• 54:11
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I…
• 54:11
  ronaldwimberly: Time to be doing stuff.
• 54:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I do think that, like, As much as…
• 54:19
  Tad Eggleston: We often think of creators as solitary beings, and a lot of the creative process can be, almost no matter what your field is.
• 54:33
  Tad Eggleston: You'll find, like, Capsules of places where a lot of people
• 54:41
  Tad Eggleston: Did great work together, and it's probably because they get to bounce off of each other, they get to compete with each other, they get to…
• 54:50
  Tad Eggleston: whatever. I mean, I don't like to lean too hard on the competition, because I don't think it's a competition in… in, like, your typical win-lose competition. I think it… I think it's more… more the…
• 55:02
  Tad Eggleston: I, I mean, I listened to…
• 55:05
  Tad Eggleston: I've listened to both Brian Wilson talk about Pet Sounds and Paul McCartney talk about Sgt. Pepper. And the thing is, they were sending their tapes to each other back and forth for feedback. So both of those albums came out of trying to be as good as the other.
• 55:23
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, no, it's like, I think there's something to it, like, I wouldn't say it's, like…
• 55:31
  ronaldwimberly: how team sports, because I think there's a whole bunch of commerce around team sports.
• 55:35
  ronaldwimberly: But I think… or even, like, say, prize fighting or something like that? But it's maybe closer to, like…
• 55:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it could be team sports in, like, the purest form. I watched a movie called Aphis last night that's a bunch of 50-year-old ball…
• 55:51
  Tad Eggleston: 50-year-old ballplayers that have day jobs, playing the last game on a… about to have a school built on it.
• 55:59
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, they don't want it to end. Like, the umpire decides it's time to go home, and they keep playing. It finally gets too dark, they turn their cars on to light the field.
• 56:12
  ronaldwimberly: Eeth, is this a documentary?
• 56:14
  Tad Eggleston: No! It's actually a scripted film. It feels like it could be a documentary. The whole thing takes place on the field.
• 56:22
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, it's like…
• 56:24
  ronaldwimberly: No.
• 56:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 56:27
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah. I was gonna say, like, it's kind of like in, I'm not a judo practitioner, but, like, when I was a kid, when I was in high school, I did, I took long fist for a while. And, like, we had, you know, we would spa in, like, the San Shao.
• 56:41
  ronaldwimberly: Sander method. But, like… I…
• 56:47
  ronaldwimberly: all that to say is, like, I think we had a little bit of this, but it's maybe more… it's maybe closer to kind of, like.
• 56:54
  ronaldwimberly: it was kind of about… you did want to win, but I think, like.
• 56:58
  ronaldwimberly: what I imagine Judo is, like, is… or what I've read a little bit about it, is, like.
• 57:05
  ronaldwimberly: your opponent, like, you… you're learning… you're learning something together, like, you're… you're, you know, like, steel sharpens steel type of thing, right? Like, and I think the best type of sparring, like.
• 57:17
  ronaldwimberly: you know, I flirted…
• 57:20
  ronaldwimberly: with Muay Thai a little bit, too. And the best type of sparring is kind of like…
• 57:25
  ronaldwimberly: It's… it's, it's play, it's a game, like, you're, you know.
• 57:29
  ronaldwimberly: you know, unless it's a fight, right? Like, if it's a fight, like, yeah, you wanna win, you know, you wanna…
• 57:35
  ronaldwimberly: you know, knock somebody out. But, like, when you're sparring, you're kind of just like…
• 57:40
  ronaldwimberly: You know, you… you ain't there to…
• 57:43
  ronaldwimberly: destroy your opponent, right? You're there to kind of, like, get better together. And I think, like, art kind of often, at least for me, because I'm definitely, like, the horse that runs the fastest when there's another fast horse in the race.
• 57:57
  ronaldwimberly: like… I think it's kinda, you know, speaking about Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's, it's like, yeah, you know.
• 58:04
  ronaldwimberly: you're out there, you see each other, and you're learning from each other, and, like, maybe there is a bit of competitive drive there? Like, I don't think it's absent, but I think it's, like, a matter of…
• 58:15
  ronaldwimberly: you know… mutual… elevation, right? And play.
• 58:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 58:20
  ronaldwimberly: like, play, you know what I mean? Like…
• 58:22
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 58:23
  ronaldwimberly: difference between, like, yeah, play fight and real fight. It's like, you know.
• 58:28
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, like, like, like… I mean, I think it's competition in that, like…
• 58:34
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, just to play off of…
• 58:37
  Tad Eggleston: Play off of the word play, you wanna feel like you… Can come to play.
• 58:46
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, if you're… if you're a modest guitarist, and Jimi Hendrix is up on stage leading an open mic night, you're gonna…
• 59:00
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna be petrified to get up on stage. But it might…
• 59:06
  Tad Eggleston: Light a fire for you to practice more, or start messing around with things, so that one week.
• 59:12
  Tad Eggleston: You can go up there and not feel like Jimi Hendrix is gonna laugh at you for getting up on stage.
• 59:18
  Tad Eggleston: Now, frankly, Jimi Hendrix…
• 59:20
  ronaldwimberly: We wouldn't laugh.
• 59:21
  ronaldwimberly: I like them.
• 59:22
  Tad Eggleston: No, I don't, I don't feel like.
• 59:23
  ronaldwimberly: He would.
• 59:24
  Tad Eggleston: Jimi Hendrix running an open mic night would be a very bad choice, because you'd petrify everybody.
• 59:32
  ronaldwimberly: Like, no, man, you know, like, we're all here to explore what we're doing, man, like, you know…
• 59:37
  ronaldwimberly: Pretty much you have, man. It's like, you know, we're all connected. And, like, people would just come up, it'd be really chill. That would be another one.
• 59:44
  Tad Eggleston: One of my favorite baseball stories is Harry Carey and Take Me Out to the Ball Game actually started at Comiskey Park when he was the White Sox announcer for a couple of years. Oh, wow, okay. And it was because he would sing it
• 1:00:00
  Tad Eggleston: In the booth, just on his own.
• 1:00:03
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 1:00:03
  Tad Eggleston: And Bill Veck, who's one of the great outsider owners in all of baseball history, is like, Harry, you should lead the crowd. And he was like, but I'm terrible, nobody wants to listen to me. And Vec's like, no, that's the point. Nobody would be afraid to sing along with you!
• 1:00:20
  ronaldwimberly: Mmm…
• 1:00:22
  Tad Eggleston: And he still turned them down, so Vec actually sent an intern up.
• 1:00:27
  Tad Eggleston: Into the ceiling above him.
• 1:00:30
  Tad Eggleston: and dropped a PA mic one night, and just did it anyway.
• 1:00:34
  ronaldwimberly: I don't know about that. I don't know about that, that's crazy.
• 1:00:37
  Tad Eggleston: And that's how it started. That's what finally convinced Harry that, oh, okay, this'll work. They won't laugh at me, they'll join.
• 1:00:46
  ronaldwimberly: He just loved the sport. He loved it.
• 1:00:49
  Tad Eggleston: But if you watch him during Cubs games, and this is the thing that anytime somebody bombs on being a guest conductor, I sit there going, all you need to do is watch Harry to understand how you conduct the 7th inning stretch. He would sing, take, and then the microphone would be on the crowd.
• 1:01:06
  ronaldwimberly: Nice.
• 1:01:07
  Tad Eggleston: Come back for, buy me some, and then the microphone would be on the crowd.
• 1:01:13
  ronaldwimberly: This comes back to what we were talking about, like, the mean, right? Like, the.
• 1:01:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:01:16
  ronaldwimberly: The common denominator.
• 1:01:19
  Tad Eggleston: You know?
• 1:01:21
  ronaldwimberly: found the tune.
• 1:01:22
  Tad Eggleston: Right. But also, like, it's a way to…
• 1:01:27
  Tad Eggleston: be a part of a group and take the emphasis off of you. Absolutely. It became… it became a community experience, rather than, let's watch Harry Carey sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game.
• 1:01:39
  Tad Eggleston: You know, damn.
• 1:01:47
  Tad Eggleston: That made me think that there aren't enough jam comics. Have you ever done a Jam? I imagine you have at some point.
• 1:01:52
  ronaldwimberly: Have you ever done a jam comic? Well, I know it's kind of like… it's maybe counterintuitive, but…
• 1:01:58
  ronaldwimberly: I think the closest thing to a Jam comic I've done is Lab. Like, I don't… I don't really,
• 1:02:05
  ronaldwimberly: I'm pretty, Apollonian when it comes to my process. I'm not like a…
• 1:02:10
  ronaldwimberly: you know, like, in… in other… in other ways, like, in other mediums, like, I kinda… I'm into doing that type of thing, but, like, I think,
• 1:02:21
  ronaldwimberly: I… I plan a bit, you know what I mean? Like, I'm a… I'm a…
• 1:02:28
  ronaldwimberly: So, I don't know, like, I…
• 1:02:32
  ronaldwimberly: I haven't, you know, it's just… it's also maybe just the type of thing where, if you haven't had that experience before that you liked it, then you're not into it. But I haven't had an experience where I'm like, oh, this was fun. But I think Lab is probably the closest we get to it, because it's like, alright, well, here are a bunch of different artists, we have a theme.
• 1:02:49
  ronaldwimberly: We're not all in the same place, but they have the time and the space to work.
• 1:02:54
  ronaldwimberly: And this is me maybe projecting the way that I like to work onto other people, but, like, I like to have the space and the time to do the thing, and I like to be alone. Like, I don't, you know, I don't necessarily want to work in a group.
• 1:03:08
  Tad Eggleston: In his studio.
• 1:03:09
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah, with a bunch of people, and it's like, like, there's a space where creativity, like, that works for me, but, like, when it comes to drawing.
• 1:03:19
  ronaldwimberly: Particularly, like.
• 1:03:20
  ronaldwimberly: not, like, open drawing or anything like that, but kind of like, yeah, drawing a comic is like, hmm… Like…
• 1:03:27
  ronaldwimberly: the way I'm gonna work, it would be, your presence is incidental, therefore it's better you're not here. You know what I mean? Like, so… so, like, that's why I think I found it a little, you know… but when it comes to, kind of, play with
• 1:03:45
  ronaldwimberly: music, or, like, I've, you know, worked in some animation production. Even with the animation production, it's like, sometimes it's like, yo, it's just time to get to work, you know what I mean? Like, it… I can't, you know…
• 1:03:57
  ronaldwimberly: I gotta be here with it, you know what I mean? Like, and this is something really interesting to…
• 1:04:03
  ronaldwimberly: discuss, and it'd be interesting to have this discussion, like, a larger roundtable, which is, like, Particularly, like, post…
• 1:04:14
  ronaldwimberly: Post-work-at-home type, you know, telecommute or whatever.
• 1:04:18
  ronaldwimberly: It's like, yo, For some things, what I've noticed is…
• 1:04:23
  ronaldwimberly: Meetings are productive, and, like, talking is productive.
• 1:04:28
  ronaldwimberly: And for other things, it's counterproductive.
• 1:04:31
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:32
  ronaldwimberly: You may be dealing with, like, a…
• 1:04:35
  ronaldwimberly: you know, in a production, right? Like, say you're doing animation or something.
• 1:04:40
  ronaldwimberly: And it's like, okay, well, let's meet every day for whatever, whatever. And it's like…
• 1:04:47
  ronaldwimberly: Which could be very useful if you have, like, a… set…
• 1:04:54
  ronaldwimberly: Actionable things that you're working towards.
• 1:04:56
  ronaldwimberly: But if you… if… if you are built around, like.
• 1:05:01
  ronaldwimberly: Coming to conclusions or figuring things out by, like, kind of free-form talking, versus, like, alright, well.
• 1:05:08
  ronaldwimberly: say you're someone who's like, alright, well, I gotta…
• 1:05:12
  ronaldwimberly: draw, you know, 20 of these drawings by however long, and, like, There's no amount of…
• 1:05:21
  ronaldwimberly: Vocal deliberation that will get us there.
• 1:05:25
  ronaldwimberly: Then, like, you have a different relationship to problem solving.
• 1:05:29
  ronaldwimberly: This is someone who is like, oh, we solved the problem by talking about it in the room. So it's like, I don't know. I guess maybe I'm triggered. I'm triggered by Jam Comics. I don't want to jam comics. Like, it…
• 1:05:42
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I did just… I dropped in the link
• 1:05:45
  Tad Eggleston: kind of a different kind of jam comic that you can do from home.
• 1:05:50
  Tad Eggleston: that I… that I realized I hadn't plugged for a while, so I'm going to. Alright, it's called the Infinite Corpse.
• 1:05:56
  ronaldwimberly: Just get to do the next step.
• 1:05:57
  Tad Eggleston: three panels.
• 1:05:59
  ronaldwimberly: Surrealist… surrealist.
• 1:06:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:06:01
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, it goes back to the surrealists. Yeah, you know, you know… I'm sure it's great.
• 1:06:09
  ronaldwimberly: for.
• 1:06:12
  Tad Eggleston: 520-some-odd people who've done it so far.
• 1:06:17
  ronaldwimberly: You're like… super, super fun. Like, I think…
• 1:06:22
  ronaldwimberly: It's its own sort of… I think it's how you relate to people. Like, so I do something that's similar to this, or I've done something similar to this with an artist friend of mine.
• 1:06:32
  ronaldwimberly: Shout out to Steven out in Columbus, Ohio. But we'll send each other stuff back and forth, and I've been talking, I actually owe the homie Tunde, I owe him a, thing, too. But, like, sending art back and forth, and then, like, kind of…
• 1:06:47
  ronaldwimberly: collaboratively, and, like, I think it's something dope, too, because not just, like, what you do, but what space you leave, you know, or how you undo things is, like, very interesting. So, yes.
• 1:06:58
  ronaldwimberly: It is a way of… interacting… with…
• 1:07:02
  ronaldwimberly: an artist. I think maybe I'm a bit of a…
• 1:07:06
  ronaldwimberly: Prude, in the sense of just, like, I can probably… Like, it's such a…
• 1:07:13
  ronaldwimberly: small group of people that I would choose to do that with. You know, it's like, so I'm not… I'm not loose, you know what I mean? Like, I'm like, hey, let's… I'm like, hmm…
• 1:07:24
  ronaldwimberly: I'll jam with this person, I'll jam with that person. So it's like, you know, I'd probably be very, very particular about who I jam with.
• 1:07:32
  ronaldwimberly: I don't know, maybe I'm square in that way. I found…
• 1:07:35
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 1:07:36
  ronaldwimberly: Another… a new way that I'm square.
• 1:07:40
  Tad Eggleston: No, I don't even remember why it came up, it just popped into my head, because…
• 1:07:44
  ronaldwimberly: I think it's dope, though. I'm like, I'm excited people are doing it. In this moment, I've been…
• 1:07:50
  ronaldwimberly: wanting to… spend more time understanding the Surrealists. Like, we're in a… we're in a moment where there's a…
• 1:07:59
  ronaldwimberly: the moment is rhyming politically with the time that surrealists were doing their thing, but also, like, surrealism has become kind of, like.
• 1:08:07
  ronaldwimberly: You know, people are… Creating in that mode again.
• 1:08:14
  ronaldwimberly: And I'm curious about… I would like to learn more about, like, kind of…
• 1:08:19
  ronaldwimberly: why and what they're doing. This weekend, or… it was… Wednesday?
• 1:08:27
  ronaldwimberly: Wednesday or Thursday, I saw… I love boosters, and
• 1:08:34
  ronaldwimberly: I'd seen it before, like.
• 1:08:37
  Tad Eggleston: What is this?
• 1:08:39
  ronaldwimberly: I love Boosters. It's the new Boots Riley film.
• 1:08:43
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:08:44
  ronaldwimberly: It's very… it's very good. Go see it. Like, if only so that people keep
• 1:08:50
  ronaldwimberly: Making these types of films, and playing these types of films in the theater.
• 1:08:55
  ronaldwimberly: And… I don't know if it's…
• 1:09:00
  ronaldwimberly: It's doing some… yeah, it's doing some… some surreal things, you know?
• 1:09:07
  ronaldwimberly: And, like, I don't know if you ever saw this film, Nope.
• 1:09:11
  ronaldwimberly: But, like…
• 1:09:12
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because somebody I know, you recommended it to me.
• 1:09:17
  ronaldwimberly: Probably last time, right?
• 1:09:18
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah. And also working in that mode, you know what I mean? And so I'm like, man, it's something happening right now, and so I'd be curious what the, you know, exquisite corpse, like.
• 1:09:32
  ronaldwimberly: as a…
• 1:09:33
  ronaldwimberly: practice, like, what is, you know, what it does if I were to participate in it. I think lab is kind of like this, though, to be honest. Like, lab functions this way.
• 1:09:43
  ronaldwimberly: You know, we… particularly when it comes to the point
• 1:09:48
  ronaldwimberly: And on accident, me and the designer.
• 1:09:51
  ronaldwimberly: So, Chloe Sheff is my designer on this one. She's worked in, Interview Magazine, she works Lux Magazine, those two are the ones that, like, I'm most familiar with.
• 1:10:02
  ronaldwimberly: She's a phenomenal, designer, And, we had,
• 1:10:10
  ronaldwimberly: Mayel from Beehive was our… Original designer on,
• 1:10:16
  ronaldwimberly: Lab Zero, and Maya did a dope job, too.
• 1:10:21
  ronaldwimberly: I think…
• 1:10:23
  ronaldwimberly: it's just a matter of difference, right? Because, like, I think Chloe and I kind of think similarly. So, in one way, that's…
• 1:10:33
  ronaldwimberly: Maybe it's a little boring, because, like, you have two people who have a similar way of thinking about the project.
• 1:10:39
  ronaldwimberly: Or… We don't always agree, which is…
• 1:10:43
  ronaldwimberly: always interesting. The way we clash is an interesting way.
• 1:10:46
  ronaldwimberly: I think.
• 1:10:48
  ronaldwimberly: Steel sharpens steel, right? And Chloe is doing some really interesting things with the design of Lab Magazine. She's done the last two.
• 1:10:58
  ronaldwimberly: Now, I wanted to see what she would do with this first one, because the first one…
• 1:11:02
  ronaldwimberly: Is the one that is… essentially… me. Like, it's just…
• 1:11:10
  ronaldwimberly: The first lab is how you get a clue into why I even do it.
• 1:11:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:11:17
  ronaldwimberly: And so to invite someone else, and accidentally working at the same time that I'm working, because I did not finish everything I wanted to finish in time.
• 1:11:27
  ronaldwimberly: is truly, like, a collaborative. It's push and pull, it's going both ways. Because when you invite somebody, it's like.
• 1:11:36
  ronaldwimberly: big in their, like, creative energy into your project while you're still doing it.
• 1:11:42
  ronaldwimberly: it's like two rivers coming together, you know what I mean? Like, things are smashing and, you know…
• 1:11:49
  ronaldwimberly: gravity is pulling in both ways, and I think this is gonna be… Very interesting to…
• 1:11:57
  ronaldwimberly: read. And I'm looking forward to reading it, because…
• 1:12:03
  ronaldwimberly: I don't know what the fuck is gonna happen. And how do you advertise something that you don't know what's gonna happen? Which is like, this is art, you know what I mean? It's exciting.
• 1:12:14
  Tad Eggleston: Advertise it when it's done, and you know what happened.
• 1:12:16
  ronaldwimberly: Exactly. That's… well, that's why… that's why the… the fourth issue was so easy to talk about, because we already knew what we did 3 times before.
• 1:12:26
  ronaldwimberly: We have a… we have an idea of what we're doing this time.
• 1:12:33
  ronaldwimberly: But in a weird way, returning to the first concept, is, like, the most… radically different.
• 1:12:43
  ronaldwimberly: In terms of just process, it's been since the beginning.
• 1:12:50
  ronaldwimberly: So… And we're putting out the,
• 1:12:56
  ronaldwimberly: We're putting out several other,
• 1:13:00
  ronaldwimberly: works as part of a capsule. So, yeah, I would encourage your…
• 1:13:04
  Tad Eggleston: I got myself the capsule.
• 1:13:06
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, I would encourage your listeners to check out, you'll see, if you don't know Richie Pope's work, Ghost, You Sleeping.
• 1:13:13
  ronaldwimberly: And Freddy Carrasco as well. If you don't know their work.
• 1:13:16
  ronaldwimberly: Please check them out. We reviewed them in the first issue of Lab. We invited them to produce something for the capsule. Freddie's got a new zine from us, and Richie is re-releasing with, like, a new cover and a mac and cheese, recipe. His,
• 1:13:35
  ronaldwimberly: phenomenal comic supritis, which… If you ever… if you ever had…
• 1:13:42
  ronaldwimberly: A substantial meal, and you felt like you were gonna fall asleep.
• 1:13:46
  ronaldwimberly: You'll understand this comic. This comic is for you!
• 1:13:52
  ronaldwimberly: So, yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:54
  ronaldwimberly: I'm excited, I'm excited for it. I'm glad you got the… I'm glad you got it all. We're working hard to, get it to you, you know what I mean?
• 1:14:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, the…
• 1:14:03
  Tad Eggleston: I had to make a decision the last time, because you had, what, 10 copies of, of…
• 1:14:13
  Tad Eggleston: you know, some limited number of Issue 1 that could have been gotten in…
• 1:14:17
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 1:14:18
  Tad Eggleston: The last Kickstarter. For about the same price as get 20 copies for your barbershop.
• 1:14:23
  ronaldwimberly: Ugh.
• 1:14:24
  Tad Eggleston: blah, blah, blah.
• 1:14:25
  Tad Eggleston: And I know an art teacher that teaches comics, and I went with the 2020
• 1:14:32
  Tad Eggleston: copies for the school instead.
• 1:14:33
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, good man.
• 1:14:34
  Tad Eggleston: Good man.
• 1:14:37
  Tad Eggleston: I knew I was giving you more money, but I decided to do it for the greater good, rather than…
• 1:14:43
  ronaldwimberly: I think… you know what, I think you are… then you are… you are part of lab, like, you are part of our project when you do work like that, because…
• 1:14:51
  Tad Eggleston: I tried.
• 1:14:51
  ronaldwimberly: That's what it's for.
• 1:14:53
  ronaldwimberly: You know?
• 1:14:54
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that sort of thing is one of my favorite
• 1:14:59
  Tad Eggleston: This is the message to all the Kickstarter people out there, many of whom will come to me to boost their thing. You want to sucker me into giving you more money? Give me the opportunity to send it to a school or a library.
• 1:15:13
  ronaldwimberly: Word.
• 1:15:15
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, good to know. I mean, I'm all for it, like.
• 1:15:18
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I… I not only…
• 1:15:22
  Tad Eggleston: I not only did that for Andrew Iden's Appalachia Complex project, Island in the Sky, but, like.
• 1:15:31
  Tad Eggleston: When he put out a thing as they were…
• 1:15:35
  Tad Eggleston: you know, the project was closed, but they were still in… what does Kickstarter do now? You can do your…
• 1:15:42
  Tad Eggleston: Late purchases, I forget what.
• 1:15:44
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, right, yeah, they have something where people can, you know… Right.
• 1:15:47
  Tad Eggleston: Right. So it was in that period, blah blah blah, he said that he had way more schools and libraries that had expressed interest in getting copies than he'd actually been
• 1:15:58
  Tad Eggleston: that he actually had funded so far, you know, I was the one that then did my rare take to…
• 1:16:05
  Tad Eggleston: We have a relatively active Instagram page, because my wife takes care of it, and no other social media presence, because she only takes care of the Instagram page. So I said, Kelly, we need an Instagram to say that people need to go buy more copies for schools, and then I went to…
• 1:16:23
  Tad Eggleston: to Blue Sky, and I said, buy more copies for schools.
• 1:16:27
  ronaldwimberly: Nice. I mean… Yeah, note to self.
• 1:16:31
  Tad Eggleston: Whether I push the needle or not, who knows? But, but…
• 1:16:36
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, that is one of my passions. It's one of the reasons this podcast exists, is, like…
• 1:16:43
  Tad Eggleston: Comics as a medium are… Completely underappreciated.
• 1:16:50
  Tad Eggleston: Comics are their own medium. Comics are every bit as literate as film or prose.
• 1:17:00
  Tad Eggleston: You never, ever, ever have somebody say, I don't like moving pictures, or I don't like words on paper. The only medium that anybody will ever say, flat out, they don't like
• 1:17:17
  Tad Eggleston: is comics, and most of the time, they're not even telling the truth, because they love peanuts, or they love Calvin and Hobbes, or they always read Raina Telgemeier. It's just, in their mind, comics is only Spider-Man.
• 1:17:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 1:17:32
  ronaldwimberly: Something else, right? Or one of the others. I think, you know… Right. I don't know, like…
• 1:17:36
  ronaldwimberly: I think, yeah, part of it has to do with… what… The medium can be symbolically
• 1:17:45
  ronaldwimberly: And I think, it's like…
• 1:17:49
  ronaldwimberly: You know, no off… you know, no offense to any nerds listening, but, like.
• 1:17:54
  ronaldwimberly: the fact that it's become kind of like, that it became an identity for a while, you know, and kind of how people bind themselves up, and like, a lot of the gatekeeping, it's like, you can't casually… like you said, if you picked up a whatever magazine, you know, people aren't gonna be like, okay, well, yeah, I'm a…
• 1:18:13
  ronaldwimberly: I'm a such-and-such magazine, like, I'm a… you know, some people do make their whole identity out of reading books. It's like, oh, I'm a fiction person. You know, like, rarely.
• 1:18:24
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:18:24
  ronaldwimberly: Anyone can pick it up, right? Anyone can pick that up.
• 1:18:26
  Tad Eggleston: If you're trying to make the argument that we've done some of this to ourselves, I won't disagree with you.
• 1:18:32
  ronaldwimberly: But, you know, I think part of… I just would like for, you know, maybe part of the work that…
• 1:18:42
  ronaldwimberly: we're doing, you and I, is showing the breadth of, like.
• 1:18:47
  ronaldwimberly: What it can be, and then maybe take a little bit of the…
• 1:18:51
  ronaldwimberly: the, barrier of entry away, you know what I mean?
• 1:18:55
  Tad Eggleston: the idea.
• 1:18:56
  ronaldwimberly: You know, check it out. And if you don't like that one, you don't like that one. It doesn't mean that.
• 1:19:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:19:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's my whole point, is like, it's like, nobody ever went off and saw Scream and said, oh, I don't like movies.
• 1:19:10
  ronaldwimberly: Right.
• 1:19:11
  Tad Eggleston: They went, oh, maybe, maybe kitschy horror movies aren't for me, let me try a different one.
• 1:19:18
  ronaldwimberly: Right.
• 1:19:20
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, so it goes, that's how I think.
• 1:19:22
  Tad Eggleston: Nobody didn't get through great expectations and say, I can't read novels.
• 1:19:28
  ronaldwimberly: Maybe, though. I mean…
• 1:19:31
  Tad Eggleston: close sometimes.
• 1:19:32
  ronaldwimberly: Right.
• 1:19:33
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm a teacher, and I sometimes have issues with the books that we choose to teach, not because they're bad books. I mean, I love Great Expectations, I love Dickens, but Dickens is a very different read.
• 1:19:46
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah.
• 1:19:48
  ronaldwimberly: Well, that's the thing, it's the difference between, like.
• 1:19:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's like starting somebody on comics with Alan Moore.
• 1:19:53
  ronaldwimberly: Right.
• 1:19:55
  ronaldwimberly: But I think, you know…
• 1:19:56
  Tad Eggleston: Watchmen is not actually a great gateway. I mean, if it works as a gateway, you come in hard.
• 1:20:02
  ronaldwimberly: Right.
• 1:20:03
  ronaldwimberly: But…
• 1:20:04
  Tad Eggleston: number of people who get handed Watchmen and don't get through more than 10 or so pages of it.
• 1:20:10
  ronaldwimberly: There's a subject. You have to be, I think, you have to be interested or familiar with a particular type of comic, right? Or the medium.
• 1:20:19
  ronaldwimberly: I think…
• 1:20:20
  Tad Eggleston: Also, it's just dense.
• 1:20:22
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 1:20:23
  Tad Eggleston: You know, more… writes dense work. That's not a bad thing, but it is a thing.
• 1:20:30
  Tad Eggleston: You know, there's no breeziness to an Alan Moore story.
• 1:20:34
  Tad Eggleston: With…
• 1:20:35
  ronaldwimberly: I'm thinking about…
• 1:20:36
  Tad Eggleston: A few exceptions.
• 1:20:37
  ronaldwimberly: comparing, like, Dickens got, like, it's pictorial, the prose is, you know, you can pull any little part away from it.
• 1:20:46
  ronaldwimberly: what would I compare… Dickens 2 is a comic book. I don't know if I would.
• 1:20:51
  ronaldwimberly: I think there's a lot of…
• 1:20:54
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, I don't know what we do, or, like, how we solve that problem, if it can be solved. I was talking to, again, talking to Fred, and I was like, well.
• 1:21:04
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, while Signal, like, we wanna… we're putting this stuff out, we're doing this stuff so that, like,
• 1:21:13
  ronaldwimberly: If there's someone who…
• 1:21:15
  ronaldwimberly: you know, in 5-10 years, the next Fred wants to put something out. Maybe we'll be an institution that can help put that out.
• 1:21:25
  ronaldwimberly: But, like, it's also a matter of, like.
• 1:21:29
  ronaldwimberly: it has to be alive, the medium and the way we…
• 1:21:35
  ronaldwimberly: interact with it has to be alive, like, I'm not doing this out of nostalgia, so it's like, thinking about the best way of connecting
• 1:21:42
  ronaldwimberly: And I think if there is… if I do believe, and I do believe that comics is a vital and a live medium, if there is a problem with how people are connecting with it, it may be pointing at things that are greater than just, like.
• 1:21:58
  ronaldwimberly: And this gets into, like.
• 1:22:01
  ronaldwimberly: Boots said something interesting where he was like, I'm not sure I agree with him, but I kind of agree with him, which is like, you have to have something in your life, if you're an artist, that's more important to you than just the art, right? Or the practice, the art practice. And I think…
• 1:22:17
  ronaldwimberly: The truth… there's lots of truth in that statement, and one of them is, it's like, if we find that people aren't engaging with
• 1:22:26
  ronaldwimberly: literature or, say, comics even, I think it might be pointing to, like, a larger problem that we're having with society in this moment, which is just, like.
• 1:22:38
  ronaldwimberly: You know…
• 1:22:41
  Tad Eggleston: People aren't engaging.
• 1:22:42
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, people aren't engaging, but kind of also just, like.
• 1:22:47
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, and we touched on the gatekeeping a little bit. I think, I mean, again.
• 1:22:52
  Tad Eggleston: when I was selling music, or when I was selling comics.
• 1:22:56
  Tad Eggleston: And I still sometimes get an opportunity to sell comics now.
• 1:23:03
  Tad Eggleston: I think much less about where I think the overall quality of an item
• 1:23:13
  Tad Eggleston: Is that in trying to get to know the person
• 1:23:16
  Tad Eggleston: that I'm selling to, and what they like, and whether or not they will like it.
• 1:23:22
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, I think the artist's job is to make… Make the best…
• 1:23:28
  Tad Eggleston: art, stories, what… I mean, if you want to make it, there's somebody that wants… to experience it.
• 1:23:36
  Tad Eggleston: I think, I think it's always dangerous to change what we make.
• 1:23:41
  Tad Eggleston: To try to fit the audience, but that's also where those salespeople, or those critics, or whatever, actually have a great role, is in…
• 1:23:52
  Tad Eggleston: In helping the people who will like it know that it's there.
• 1:23:59
  Tad Eggleston: one of the big things that I've always stuck to with my criticism is I really try hard not to bash anything.
• 1:24:09
  Tad Eggleston: If I don't like it, then I don't talk about it. There's… there's… there's so many books that I do like, like…
• 1:24:17
  Tad Eggleston: to spend time saying, I don't like something, is to take away time
• 1:24:22
  Tad Eggleston: from something that I could be…
• 1:24:25
  Tad Eggleston: promoting. And some people will talk about, oh, but good criticism helped me become better, and yes, good criticism, but good criticism is kind of a different thing from a review.
• 1:24:35
  Tad Eggleston: Like, criticism is when you go, okay, I'm gonna break this apart.
• 1:24:41
  Tad Eggleston: about what works and what doesn't work. That's not the thing that's in…
• 1:24:45
  Tad Eggleston: a podcast that you listen to in your car most of the time. I mean, maybe sometime I'll decide to do a criticism, criticism one. Some of our roundtables come closer to that. Some of our book clubs come closer to that. But, like, the capsule review in Rolling Stone isn't criticism, it's…
• 1:25:05
  Tad Eggleston: It's… Helping you know whether or not
• 1:25:09
  Tad Eggleston: you're gonna like it. So, like, for me, it's like, if it's a 3-star album, then you don't need to actually print it. Print the 4- and 5-star reviews, and why you like them.
• 1:25:24
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 1:25:25
  Tad Eggleston: Or, or get rid of stars entirely. I mean, I remember the, the, the… the day…
• 1:25:33
  Tad Eggleston: Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull came out, and I'm in a real minority of people that enjoyed that movie and thought it was…
• 1:25:42
  Tad Eggleston: thoroughly an Indiana Jones movie. It wasn't Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• 1:25:46
  Tad Eggleston: but I liked it at least as much as I liked Temple of Doom, right?
• 1:25:51
  Tad Eggleston: But I read Michael Wilmington's review in the Chicago Tribune, and he gave it, like, one and a half stars.
• 1:25:57
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 1:25:58
  Tad Eggleston: But, in reading his review, I went, you know, because it was things like, one-dimensional villain, and I'm sitting there going, have we had more than a one-dimensional villain in a Indiana Jones movie? Like, everything he was complaining
• 1:26:17
  Tad Eggleston: about, it's like, at what point did an Oscar contender for…
• 1:26:23
  Tad Eggleston: deep thought and action. Everything you're complaining about feels like an Indiana Jones movie to me.
• 1:26:30
  ronaldwimberly: I mean, that's just… I mean, sometimes.
• 1:26:32
  Tad Eggleston: Even though I knew I was gonna like it.
• 1:26:33
  ronaldwimberly: critic, sometimes the work is your foil, though, right?
• 1:26:36
  ronaldwimberly: Right. Your work is just functioning as your foil. Like, some people don't like that, I can understand why they don't like it, but if you got some work that you're trying to do, sometimes you pick a foil. It sounds like this guy picked a foil, you know? Like, it wasn't necessarily about, like you said, I think… I think about, you know.
• 1:26:53
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I don't think really anything opened up against it, so, like, it's not like when it's Indiana Jones weekend, you've got a lot of choices on how to fill your hitches.
• 1:27:04
  ronaldwimberly: I'm the… yeah, I'm the type of person, like, I'm not, you know, like, I don't do a lot of criticism, you know, like, week to week. Like, I got a buddy, Jason Lytle, he does a lot of the… the formal…
• 1:27:13
  Tad Eggleston: I still need to reach out to. Yeah, yeah. Shoot me his email address. I'm not as good at going through Instagram.
• 1:27:18
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, I was 17.
• 1:27:20
  Tad Eggleston: He told me I should talk to him the last time, too, and I forgot.
• 1:27:22
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, no.
• 1:27:23
  Tad Eggleston: And then I remembered, and then I forgot, and then I remembered, and I forgot, because that's how my brain works.
• 1:27:28
  ronaldwimberly: That's how brains work.
• 1:27:30
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah.
• 1:27:33
  ronaldwimberly: I'll send it to you in an email, so I'm not stuck right after we go.
• 1:27:37
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:27:38
  Tad Eggleston: Or connect us. Yeah, yeah. Send an email to both of us.
• 1:27:41
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, we'll do.
• 1:27:41
  Tad Eggleston: You guys should chat.
• 1:27:43
  ronaldwimberly: Yes, will do, will do.
• 1:27:45
  ronaldwimberly: But, so, like, yeah, he does criticism that's like, alright, he's doing some of the work that you're talking about. It's like, alright, well…
• 1:27:51
  ronaldwimberly: He… he might write about some things he doesn't like, but I think our approach to criticism is a little bit different, meaning, like, it's a thing that people… has the same name, but probably are different things. And, like, when I…
• 1:28:07
  ronaldwimberly: And I sometimes do both. But, like, sometimes I will… the work is just a,
• 1:28:14
  ronaldwimberly: It's a way for me to talk about something
• 1:28:20
  ronaldwimberly: that can be compelling. Like, the work is something that I want, right? Like, the work is something that I want people to engage with, often.
• 1:28:29
  ronaldwimberly: whether.
• 1:28:30
  Tad Eggleston: And I guess that's kind of…
• 1:28:31
  Tad Eggleston: Where I separate between reviewing and criticism, too.
• 1:28:35
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:28:36
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah.
• 1:28:37
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, I just do that sometimes.
• 1:28:40
  ronaldwimberly: No, no, reviewing…
• 1:28:41
  Tad Eggleston: Something that you want to…
• 1:28:46
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, I mean…
• 1:28:46
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like you had a much more interesting thought than I had there.
• 1:28:49
  ronaldwimberly: Well, maybe it's lost to history, but, you know, I'm sure…
• 1:28:52
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, sorry.
• 1:28:53
  ronaldwimberly: Too late. No, it's all good, it's all good.
• 1:28:58
  ronaldwimberly: But yeah, what else should we cover, though? Like, I don't know.
• 1:29:02
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know, we might be, I mean, particularly because I have another episode to record in an hour, it might.
• 1:29:07
  ronaldwimberly: need time to…
• 1:29:08
  Tad Eggleston: it might be time to do the two… I now have two closing questions, rather than just one. Let's go. And you already brought up your answer to one of the closing questions, because…
• 1:29:20
  Tad Eggleston: Last time it was NOPE, so it can't be NOPE again.
• 1:29:23
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 1:29:24
  Tad Eggleston: Get away with answering that question the same way if I don't remember, but you reminded me, so now I remember. But the new closing question…
• 1:29:31
  Tad Eggleston: The newer closing question is that, I've been doing this podcast
• 1:29:37
  Tad Eggleston: For a little less than 5 years now.
• 1:29:40
  Tad Eggleston: And I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone.
• 1:29:43
  Tad Eggleston: The… the number… I mean, I'm spending a Sunday afternoon talking to Ronald Wimberly. I… I…
• 1:29:51
  Tad Eggleston: hang out with people that used to be names on pages. The number of things that I get to do, or…
• 1:30:00
  Tad Eggleston: or see, or participate in, or… or… I mean, because of connections I have in comics, I had both of… both of…
• 1:30:09
  Tad Eggleston: Both mine and my wife's cars were totaled in the same week, and we managed to buy two new ones on that Saturday inside of our budget, which…
• 1:30:19
  ronaldwimberly: Congratulations.
• 1:30:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. In some ways, that's the most surreal. I knew somebody who was related to somebody, and we had cars.
• 1:30:29
  ronaldwimberly: That's dope.
• 1:30:32
  Tad Eggleston: But I find that everybody in comics has stuff like this. Everybody in any of the…
• 1:30:39
  Tad Eggleston: the professions where they do things that lots of people just watch them on TV, or read about them in books, has these things that they're like, oh, wow, that was part of my life, or is part of my life, so tell me a story that you just pinch yourself about.
• 1:30:56
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 1:30:58
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm… Meaning… well, hmm.
• 1:31:03
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, you get to take the meaning in any… I mean, I just gave you 4 different meanings.
• 1:31:09
  ronaldwimberly: Right. -
• 1:31:12
  ronaldwimberly: Particular to my experience as a cartoonist that made… that's, like, a wild thing.
• 1:31:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:31:21
  ronaldwimberly: Oh!
• 1:31:21
  Tad Eggleston: Something that 10-year-old Ronald would go, what the fuck are you talking about? That's not gonna be part of my life.
• 1:31:27
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, well, I guess… So… Recently, I was on Instagram.
• 1:31:34
  ronaldwimberly: And… there's this diner on Broadway that's closing. I'm forgetting the name of it right now.
• 1:31:43
  ronaldwimberly: I'm not gonna tell y'all, because it's a month… it's already full of… everybody who's been there is gonna be going there non-stop anyway.
• 1:31:50
  ronaldwimberly: Right. But.
• 1:31:51
  Tad Eggleston: I want to be able to sit down.
• 1:31:53
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:54
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, so…
• 1:31:55
  ronaldwimberly: The last time I ate there was,
• 1:31:59
  ronaldwimberly: during, lunch break, like, Spike Lee took me there to eat lunch. We were working on the…
• 1:32:07
  Tad Eggleston: Already, you've gotten to, to, like, crazy surreal. Spike Lee took me to the diner to have lunch.
• 1:32:15
  ronaldwimberly: Because Spike Lee, he… he teaches at NYU, so he would go, you know, he would go there, and we went there to have lunch or whatever. And, like, Spike, it's funny, because…
• 1:32:25
  ronaldwimberly: We… we had bumped into each other in varying degrees, like…
• 1:32:31
  ronaldwimberly: For whatever reason, it was Brooklyn, right?
• 1:32:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:32:34
  ronaldwimberly: And,
• 1:32:36
  ronaldwimberly: prior to that, like, I don't even think you remember, I don't know if you remember, but I was an extra
• 1:32:41
  ronaldwimberly: in one of his films, like, that was filmed in Italy. And I would say, like, that was crazy, like…
• 1:32:47
  ronaldwimberly: We went to Italy, I played a Buffalo soldier, we're in Tuscany, up in the mountains. We're literally in the place where the Buffalo Soldiers called down friendly fire on themselves to, like, fucking kill Austrian Nazis and shit.
• 1:33:01
  ronaldwimberly: It was a crazy fucking experience, and like, anyway, so we're at this diner, and it's like, now it's closing, and I'm like, wow, that's… this is kind of the life.
• 1:33:10
  ronaldwimberly: that I live, like, that's what I remember about this diner. And, like, what's dope is, like, that's just a New York diner. Like, you know, we're on our way walking there, and people are talking to Spike. He's, like, a New York mascot. Like, he's literally, like.
• 1:33:23
  ronaldwimberly: you know, Mickey Mouse walking around in Disney World, you know what I mean?
• 1:33:27
  Tad Eggleston: I'm like…
• 1:33:29
  ronaldwimberly: But also, I've been to that diner before that, you feel me? Like, that's, you know, like… and we're all there, like, he used to get his scripts. There was a Kinko's, I don't know if it's still there, like, right around the corner from there, he used to get his scripts printed out there, you know what I mean? Like…
• 1:33:42
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:33:43
  ronaldwimberly: So it's like…
• 1:33:44
  ronaldwimberly: I would say that's probably… there's just so many different things, but I would say, like, that was a recent thing where I was like, oh shit, yeah, the last time I was there, I was there with Spike.
• 1:33:53
  Tad Eggleston: I'm connected to all of this… Crazy stuff.
• 1:33:57
  ronaldwimberly: I mean… and…
• 1:33:59
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:33:59
  ronaldwimberly: When I think back and I look at all of my favorite… yeah, we're talking about musicians and, like, where they're from, when I… when I hear about these people interacting with each other.
• 1:34:10
  ronaldwimberly: When I was at Pratt, I used to think that. I'm like.
• 1:34:13
  ronaldwimberly: Who do I know in school right now?
• 1:34:17
  ronaldwimberly: are… is it gonna be… people are gonna be like, oh, that's crazy, they were hanging out together. And it's like… or this person was like, you know, and like, it has kind of turned out that way. Like, I got a lot of friends, like, they're not all necessarily famous, but, like, you know, I got a lot of people who,
• 1:34:33
  ronaldwimberly: you know… People… people recognize the light that they shine, you know what I mean?
• 1:34:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:34:41
  ronaldwimberly: And… that's a blessing, like, I never…
• 1:34:44
  Tad Eggleston: It is.
• 1:34:46
  ronaldwimberly: you know… I'm blessed to have all of these types of people in my life, like, fuck around.
• 1:34:51
  ronaldwimberly: Wild Signal, you know, when I first did Lab.
• 1:34:56
  ronaldwimberly: Or even, you know, any of them.
• 1:34:58
  ronaldwimberly: Like, I think, you know, Saul always being down to, like.
• 1:35:04
  ronaldwimberly: You know, work on something, or like, you know, contribute to the project, like… you know.
• 1:35:12
  ronaldwimberly: you know, any number of people, man, like, I… I don't know, I'm…
• 1:35:16
  ronaldwimberly: ultimately, that's the only way we survive. It's like, that's the only way I've survived, is, like, kind of buttressed by, like, the love and the help of all the other artists, and…
• 1:35:26
  ronaldwimberly: Even some people who don't necessarily consider themselves artists.
• 1:35:29
  ronaldwimberly: Who, you know, helped me out, helped me get to…
• 1:35:33
  ronaldwimberly: Continue to do this, and just to get through life, man, like…
• 1:35:36
  ronaldwimberly: Because it can be… it can be difficult.
• 1:35:39
  ronaldwimberly: You know?
• 1:35:39
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, God, yes.
• 1:35:42
  ronaldwimberly: We're lucky that we can enjoy a sunny day, right?
• 1:35:45
  Tad Eggleston: That… that is a fantastic answer, I love that answer.
• 1:35:51
  Tad Eggleston: Now, for the closing question, I have to come up with something other than nope, because you did that last time. Okay. Tell me something you love.
• 1:35:59
  ronaldwimberly: Hmm.
• 1:35:59
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules.
• 1:36:02
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love.
• 1:36:07
  Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced, and you need them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
• 1:36:16
  ronaldwimberly: Whoa, I'm gonna give a two-part. I want people to remember.
• 1:36:20
  Tad Eggleston: You can give as many parts as you want.
• 1:36:21
  ronaldwimberly: I want people to remember that I already… that I already mentioned I love boosters, so, like, this actually, by the time they…
• 1:36:28
  Tad Eggleston: Aye.
• 1:36:29
  Tad Eggleston: I was already looking at show times at my local theater?
• 1:36:32
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you. Probably by the time this airs, like, I don't know when, you know, like, because this is the opening weekend.
• 1:36:40
  ronaldwimberly: Let me think… man, like, I'm in this… I'm in this room right now, And, like,
• 1:36:46
  ronaldwimberly: It looks like a kitchen.
• 1:36:49
  Tad Eggleston: It looks like a kitchen.
• 1:36:51
  ronaldwimberly: It is a kitchen, but it's also, like, a library.
• 1:36:56
  Tad Eggleston: That's my kind of room.
• 1:36:59
  ronaldwimberly: But I'm… yeah, I'm surrounded by… I'm surrounded by things.
• 1:37:04
  ronaldwimberly: That are beautiful. Oh, this is crazy.
• 1:37:07
  ronaldwimberly: Alright, I'm just gonna pick something up. I was gonna also… I was thinking about…
• 1:37:15
  ronaldwimberly: I've… I need… this is on… okay.
• 1:37:20
  ronaldwimberly: Alright, I'll pick up these three things, right? So, this is…
• 1:37:25
  ronaldwimberly: an older edition, there's a better edition now, Reconsidering Reparations by Olufemi O'Taiwo. So, I want to review this
• 1:37:35
  ronaldwimberly: someday, soon. You can read a great essay
• 1:37:41
  ronaldwimberly: standing in the room privilege by Olufemi Otaiwo,
• 1:37:47
  ronaldwimberly: And it's… I think it's online, it's, Philosophy Magazine.
• 1:37:54
  ronaldwimberly: This is, hopefully I say his name right, Parviz Tanavoli.
• 1:38:01
  ronaldwimberly: Was an Iranian artist. I picked this up when I was visiting.
• 1:38:07
  Tad Eggleston: Let me see the cover really quick.
• 1:38:10
  ronaldwimberly: when I was visiting… Chicago. I think there was an exhibition of his in Chicago.
• 1:38:16
  ronaldwimberly: And it's work as well.
• 1:38:17
  Tad Eggleston: No, that might have been when you were in town for cake, and we did sue each other then.
• 1:38:22
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:24
  ronaldwimberly: So… We get wind…
• 1:38:26
  Tad Eggleston: Harvest…
• 1:38:27
  ronaldwimberly: It's only been once.
• 1:38:27
  Tad Eggleston: Canavoli?
• 1:38:29
  ronaldwimberly: And this, yes.
• 1:38:31
  ronaldwimberly: And this is a book of his that's just his collection of locks.
• 1:38:34
  ronaldwimberly: He collected locks.
• 1:38:36
  ronaldwimberly: Wow.
• 1:38:38
  ronaldwimberly: And, like, this shit is crazy. And I would say, check out his work.
• 1:38:42
  Tad Eggleston: Persian locks.
• 1:38:44
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:45
  ronaldwimberly: Beautiful work. If you talk to me about…
• 1:38:53
  ronaldwimberly: Tanavoli's work, I might, you know, like, you might know as much as I do. I had just discovered his work a few years ago.
• 1:39:00
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, I didn't… I didn't talk to you about it.
• 1:39:02
  ronaldwimberly: No, I'm just saying, like, if someone were to see, like, you… part of the question was, like, things that you wish other people.
• 1:39:07
  Tad Eggleston: You want to be able to talk more about.
• 1:39:09
  ronaldwimberly: Right, right, right, right. So, like, I would say, let's all get to know… I mean, I think he's pretty well known in some circles, but, like.
• 1:39:16
  Tad Eggleston: Well, my wife is the art history geek, so if she hasn't…
• 1:39:20
  Tad Eggleston: If she hasn't learned about him, I'm certain she'll be all over it, and then… then you'll have two people to talk to the next time.
• 1:39:27
  ronaldwimberly: There we go.
• 1:39:28
  Tad Eggleston: Chicago.
• 1:39:29
  ronaldwimberly: There we go, yeah. I would like to visit again soon. Oh man, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so many different things I want people to…
• 1:39:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, actually, like…
• 1:39:39
  Tad Eggleston: as you bring that up, like, I'll give the plug for it again, Jim Terry's movie, Shank, is playing at the Goodman theater next Saturday.
• 1:39:54
  Tad Eggleston: Which, you know, you probably can't get to Chicago by next Saturday, but if you can, I have an extra ticket.
• 1:40:01
  ronaldwimberly: Awful.
• 1:40:01
  ronaldwimberly: Between this, like, between this, this campaign, we're gonna be very busy at…
• 1:40:08
  Tad Eggleston: Like, a couple weeks.
• 1:40:10
  ronaldwimberly: You know, we're about to go.
• 1:40:12
  Tad Eggleston: I think it'll get a wider,
• 1:40:14
  Tad Eggleston: like, so far it's been, like, one-shot screenings, but it's… it's described… I forget who gave it the review that said, imagine Monty Python made John Wick with no money. And I think that that actually…
• 1:40:30
  ronaldwimberly: It's a 2010 film, or a new film?
• 1:40:33
  Tad Eggleston: No, brand new. I don't know if it's on IMDB yet.
• 1:40:37
  ronaldwimberly: Wow, okay. Who's the director?
• 1:40:40
  Tad Eggleston: Jim Terry, who's actually a comic book artist.
• 1:40:44
  Tad Eggleston: He was actually… Two tables over from you at… at… .
• 1:40:55
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, no, I know Jim. Great guy.
• 1:40:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:40:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:58
  ronaldwimberly: Come home, India.
• 1:41:01
  ronaldwimberly: Don't…
• 1:41:04
  Tad Eggleston: I saw the first screening of it, I'm going again. Yeah, no, it looks amazing.
• 1:41:09
  Tad Eggleston: Er, well, not looks amazing. It IS amazing. I loved it. Among other things, they, they lean into their lack of
• 1:41:15
  Tad Eggleston: Like, there are two ways to handle…
• 1:41:20
  Tad Eggleston: You have no budget, and it's gonna show, you can…
• 1:41:25
  Tad Eggleston: try to ignore it and hope that the audience will ignore it with you, or you can lean into it and make it part of the joke. They lean into it and make it part of the joke, and it works really well.
• 1:41:36
  ronaldwimberly: Man, that's the history of cinema in a nutshell, to be honest. It's like, either… either the concept is a joke, or, like, the budget is… makes it a joke. How many… how many, like, multi-million dollar or $100 million films you've seen would just act like a complete fucking bullshit?
• 1:41:54
  ronaldwimberly: Right. You know what I mean? So, like… Pip.
• 1:41:57
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I think that's one of the biggest problems that filmmaking has right now, is they're way more likely to greenlight a $100 million film than a million dollar film.
• 1:42:09
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, this is a conversation everyone's having right now, so…
• 1:42:12
  Tad Eggleston: Not enough people.
• 1:42:14
  Tad Eggleston: Because not any of the people who have the money to change it.
• 1:42:18
  ronaldwimberly: Well, yeah, none of the people… yeah, like, if you're, you know, yeah, but everyone who's making… like, a lot of people making films, like, yeah, this is kind of… this is the climate that we're in.
• 1:42:28
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, this is where we can plug, plug your, your, your… Your other release from…
• 1:42:37
  Tad Eggleston: Why am I… wild?
• 1:42:39
  ronaldwimberly: About Signal, yeah.
• 1:42:40
  Tad Eggleston: Wild Signal is the… the… The soundtrack to…
• 1:42:46
  ronaldwimberly: Oh yeah, Neptune Frost, unanimous Gold Mine. Yeah, you got to see that?
• 1:42:51
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, I thought it was the boy's…
• 1:42:55
  ronaldwimberly: Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, boys go to Jupiter.
• 1:42:59
  Tad Eggleston: Boys Go to Jupiter, yeah, no, I watched… I didn't know it existed. I didn't know it existed until…
• 1:43:06
  Tad Eggleston: Until… you guys put out the soundtrack, but then I went and watched it, because…
• 1:43:13
  Tad Eggleston: And I, I, I, I… I think my take on it is that…
• 1:43:19
  Tad Eggleston: I liked it, I know the type of people who would love it,
• 1:43:25
  Tad Eggleston: And I really laughed that the type of people who would love it would love it just as much as they'd love a similar movie that costs 10 times as much. Yeah. Because it had everything to do with the movie itself is what would have made them love it, not the…
• 1:43:39
  Tad Eggleston: animation itself. Right. Does that make sense?
• 1:43:42
  Tad Eggleston: And that's not even to say that the animation was not good. The animation was… was…
• 1:43:51
  Tad Eggleston: We have such different…
• 1:43:53
  Tad Eggleston: definitions of what good… I mean, the number of times I hear people talk about, like.
• 1:43:58
  Tad Eggleston: how much better this was filmed than that was filmed when I'm sitting there going, that's just the difference in the qualities of cameras between 1980 and 2014.
• 1:44:08
  ronaldwimberly: If… if that's… if that's.
• 1:44:11
  Tad Eggleston: It's not even actually, like, anything that the cinematographer talked to. You're talking about camera quality.
• 1:44:18
  ronaldwimberly: If that. I mean, what did they watch it on? You know what I mean? What did they even see? Right, right.
• 1:44:24
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, I don't know, I don't have these discussions. Like, it's just, you know…
• 1:44:28
  Tad Eggleston: I don't have them a ton, but I try not to excise all people and or family members out of my
• 1:44:38
  Tad Eggleston: out of my life that don't have the type of conversations that I have about.
• 1:44:44
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, well, you start with… I mean, that's what I mean, it's like, I just let people go off at a certain point.
• 1:44:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's what… yeah, okay, okay.
• 1:44:51
  ronaldwimberly: He'll let them go off, you know what I mean? It's like, I think it's…
• 1:44:54
  Tad Eggleston: And I think my response rather than saying it. Right.
• 1:44:58
  ronaldwimberly: Yeah, yeah. Getting better at that. At a certain point, at a certain point, who's stupid if you… if you're gonna sit here and try to convince my… they just don't, like, sometimes people, you know, like, if they don't have the information, like, how are you trying to convince them, you know what I mean? Like, what's the point? You know, like, just let people live, like, and, you know, hopefully…
• 1:45:16
  ronaldwimberly: Hopefully, the next time you find yourself in their position, people will gently either humor you, or, like.
• 1:45:24
  ronaldwimberly: gently, put you on. You know what I mean? Well, sometimes you don't need to be put on, you know what I mean? Like, sometimes it's like, I find myself, I'm in a conversation, like, it's just not even that important.
• 1:45:34
  ronaldwimberly: And I mean, like, I just… you know, it's like, wow, can we get the things that you like in front of you, right? And also… That's to me…
• 1:45:43
  Tad Eggleston: is always the goal.
• 1:45:44
  ronaldwimberly: And people could be on the beginning of their journey about some shit, right? Like, I remember when I first…
• 1:45:50
  ronaldwimberly: you know, anytime you first come in contact with something, you're like, okay, well, this is that, and this is, you know, oh, this is doing this, and it's like, you come to find out, it's like, wow, okay, there's a lot more to this than I even knew, but like.
• 1:46:02
  ronaldwimberly: you usually don't jump from one point to the next, like, it's a level of discovery, all the way up to the point where, like, you are the person who's doing the thing, should you take that road, you know what I mean?
• 1:46:15
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:46:15
  ronaldwimberly: Most people end up doing the thing, right? Like, most people who talk about
• 1:46:19
  ronaldwimberly: anything that they love and experience, like, look at music, like, how we enjoy music, and to what degree we enjoy music, and prob… you know, like.
• 1:46:28
  ronaldwimberly: we can all do it, right? We can clap our hands and we can whistle, right? But when we listen to, like.
• 1:46:33
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know, some people can't whistle.
• 1:46:35
  ronaldwimberly: Huh?
• 1:46:36
  Tad Eggleston: Some people can't whistle, but most people can hum.
• 1:46:39
  ronaldwimberly: Right, you know… Alright. Girl, okay, fine, yeah, but you know, like…
• 1:46:45
  Tad Eggleston: I was with him.
• 1:46:46
  ronaldwimberly: And if you… and if they can't whistle, then maybe they can appreciate, like, the…
• 1:46:52
  ronaldwimberly: that it's a skill, right? And, like, there's some.
• 1:46:54
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:46:55
  ronaldwimberly: do it. And it's like, oh, wait, so if I try to do this thing, and I have the sound in my head, but there's an obstacle to, like, producing that in a way that other people can understand it, or even if I can hum, and it's like, wow, they don't understand what the fuck…
• 1:47:10
  ronaldwimberly: I'm hungry.
• 1:47:11
  ronaldwimberly: Right? Then you start to appreciate things, and then, like, you go beyond that, and…
• 1:47:16
  ronaldwimberly: All the way up to, like, fuckin'…
• 1:47:19
  ronaldwimberly: modal jazz or whatever, right? You know, like, there's some… and everything in between. But sometimes you just gotta let people be like, oh yeah, no, I… I love fucking…
• 1:47:28
  ronaldwimberly: Carly. Or whatever the fuck. He's like, alright, more power to you. I hope you enjoy it.
• 1:47:35
  ronaldwimberly: You know?
• 1:47:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it…
• 1:47:38
  Tad Eggleston: As always, it's been a pleasure for Ronald Lumberley. This has been 22 Panels. We will see you after the next page.