0:01

Try Hi! Hello Hi! I'm

0:03

a partner in Kerala and welcome

0:06

once again to Too Hot For

0:08

Radio the literary podcast that is

0:10

basically the hundred and twenty Days

0:12

of Sodom if the Marquis decide.

0:14

Was you civic and that?

0:17

That's. right? We bring you the

0:19

South Korean Salacious Tales that are

0:21

big sister show selected shorts yet

0:23

air on Public Radio. Find by

0:25

Earth. Not even sloppy seconds when

0:27

the buttoned up types only do

0:29

over the clothes stuff. Has.

0:32

You hotheads know when you got something

0:34

on your chest other than the chain

0:37

mail used to cause play Lancelot? You've

0:39

got to get it off. Have

0:42

mean some kind of talking cure

0:44

or outright confession? Hopefully.

0:46

You smart listeners have a therapist.

0:48

Not because you need a eight,

0:50

but because you kind of do

0:52

need it. Or. Maybe

0:54

you paint or ride? Or methodically

0:57

glue your fingernail clippings into busts

0:59

of your favorite Looney Tunes characters?

1:01

Some kind of creative catharsis that

1:04

helps you get it out. Me:

1:07

I've got all the usual mental

1:09

health checks and if they

1:11

all fail, I've got their yogi.

1:14

It's. Like karaoke. but everybody

1:17

within fifty feet goes the

1:19

oh. You.

1:21

And in think it from looking at

1:23

me would you hot heads and yet

1:25

I get into it. It's perfect while

1:27

in the midst of a break up

1:29

or a break down. I. Just

1:31

picked Say Robbins Dance and on

1:34

my own. in seeing not dance

1:36

and cry it will. I.

1:38

Always get my own standing. Oh

1:41

and a mop bucket. Anyway,

1:44

That's all to prepare you for

1:46

the brief but potent story ahead

1:48

of You, which was written by

1:50

James Hannahan Had a Ham is

1:52

the Pen Faulkner Award winning author

1:54

of sharp satires including delicious foods

1:56

and didn't nobody give a shit

1:58

what happened to Carlotta. Which.

2:01

Well, objective leave. Great title that

2:03

really paints a pitcher. Can

2:05

Am sharp satires, take no prisoners.

2:08

even in the seemingly innocuous context

2:10

of the peace Were going to

2:12

hear. Performing. The

2:14

story and after we knew that

2:16

was going to absolutely go for

2:18

it. Baron Von is a long

2:21

time comedian and actor who has

2:23

been featured on series including Grace

2:25

and Frankie and the reboot of

2:27

Mystery Science Theater Three Thousand. He

2:29

also hosted his own stand up

2:31

series on Comedy Central called the

2:33

New Negroes. Stick Around after the

2:35

reading as will be talking to

2:37

the author himself. And one final

2:40

thing before we begin. Our All

2:42

caps Clinton morning for the squeamish.

2:45

Warning. This story

2:47

is about addicts. And

2:49

Muppets to be can't bear to

2:51

here yet. One more bit of

2:54

your childhood be possibly painted forever.

2:56

Well, I'm worried about you. And

3:00

now here's Baron Von

3:02

Performing James Hannah Hands

3:04

Cookie Monster. Serious. Meaning

3:08

Sydney. Me

3:10

A problem. Ever

3:12

since be little monster Me:

3:14

love cooking meat parents got

3:16

the whole wix miata have

3:18

discipline at home Be parents

3:20

not pay attention all time

3:23

they eat cookie me think

3:25

that normal. Me said.

3:28

We. Want to be cool in

3:30

junior high school sprinkle can

3:32

share with other monsters missed,

3:35

it validates as that way,

3:37

then me Grandpa. He

3:40

die of your resume. Sonic

3:42

give out. Me love

3:45

Grandpa. Meal. Of Grandpa more

3:47

than cookie. Me: Grades:

3:49

Ultimate. Me: put

3:51

in remedial program be drop out

3:54

of high school. We

3:56

still in cook your time downtown

3:58

and supermarkets in coffee drop wherever

4:01

me can find me sublimated. be

4:03

sorrow with cookie. Me:

4:05

get out of home. Me: Just to.

4:08

Me: Always look for cookie

4:10

me look and dumpster behind

4:12

every elementary school rip open

4:15

garbage bag. Hope for grumps.

4:18

Me: Sad. Mimi.

4:20

Oscar the Grouch While me looking

4:22

through dumpsters, he introduced me to

4:24

Jamaica. Sudden. And

4:27

we get on kids show and

4:29

big a world famous celebrity make

4:31

him I like to cook Van

4:33

skipped so much cody me not

4:36

even meet money. Me

4:38

addiction get worse. Plus

4:42

we become megalomaniac. Cookie

4:45

become the whole identity. Me

4:48

first name, Say who stood

4:50

Cookie. Me

4:52

have for marriage Me have for

4:55

divorce. Me to

4:57

have kids. Be. Kids know, talk

4:59

to me. They say me like cooking

5:01

more than parenting. Be

5:03

can see me starting

5:05

cycle of pain over

5:07

again. Me: so sad

5:10

me attempt suicide. How.

5:13

By. You've got to. Meet

5:16

it all in all room of

5:19

Me: Beverly Hills Mansion Flying crumbs

5:21

all over problems in sync Layer

5:23

of Kratos on every surface of

5:26

house problems between cushions of Italian

5:28

leather sofa scrims What expense of

5:30

our courts in jewelry Rookie floating

5:33

on surface of infinity pool. Me

5:37

lying on floor unconscious would paramedics

5:39

com. Me:

5:42

it's so much blames, Me

5:44

stomach explode. Be.

5:46

In Cook Goma. For week.

5:50

Be. Therapists finally convinced me me to

5:52

have substance abuse problem. Still

5:54

may not come here for

5:56

a whole months me feel

5:58

so much say. Repeal

6:01

Everyone judge me me afraid

6:03

of what press say. Me:

6:06

Think Publicist Have cow?

6:09

Actually publicists his cow. Me

6:12

think he career over a magic

6:15

cookie monster know he called gave

6:17

me a whole career. Me: all

6:19

identity based on me, addiction, Nobody

6:22

know me real name Sydney. Everybody

6:25

think me personally cookies but it

6:27

not not do. It. City.

6:30

Say imagine you alcoholic whole

6:32

world call you scary. triggering

6:37

even hearing me stage name. With.

6:40

No more cookie. For. Cookie

6:42

Monster. Me

6:45

up fifteen days clean and me

6:47

hoping to live rest of life

6:49

cookie free. Me: Want

6:51

it gone? Serious acting Roles:

6:53

Alcohol Willy Loman. James.

6:56

Tyrone me will relationship

6:58

with me kids. Me:

7:00

Want find out? Who real

7:03

Sydney? And Show World.

7:21

Thank you so much for taking the

7:23

time to speak with me. I love

7:25

your story Cel Mai. It's an barons

7:27

reading of it was just as perfect.

7:30

What was your association with Cookie Monster

7:32

before you wrote a story like a

7:34

little bit of? Was there something in

7:36

the character that call out to you

7:39

about something deeper meaning to be told.

7:42

Know. It was really just about his voice.

7:44

It was. There was actually something I read

7:47

that a student of mine row. And

7:49

it reminded me of Cookie Monster. and I was

7:51

like, are you trying to write him of I

7:54

knew he wasn't tradable right in the voice of

7:56

Cookie Monster, but I was like, Someone.

7:58

Should do that. And

8:01

then and then the rest of it just kind

8:03

of like, well, what would Cookie Monster you know,

8:06

What? Could he say. And

8:08

I thought I'd written written this book.

8:11

Ah delicious foods that are

8:13

deals. To. Have a

8:15

large degree with issues involving

8:17

addiction. Arm. And

8:20

I thought, well, you know, Cookie Monster is

8:22

clearly an addict. Or

8:24

it into How. I know is

8:27

pretty open about it really. Well

8:29

yeah, I mean that the idea of you

8:31

sneeze gone to like cookies anonymous or whatever.

8:33

he standing up and telling a story. Yeah

8:36

and. You

8:38

do, you know right? A lot

8:40

of very sharp satire and satire

8:42

to and often involve revisiting you

8:44

know, an ambulance, a childhood friend

8:46

and then seeing and you're an

8:48

adult contact. Is there something about

8:51

that I can tell you. Well

8:53

I mean it's a sort of

8:56

funny thing to i'm to consider

8:58

right that you wouldn't consider as

9:00

a child. Yeah. On. When.

9:03

You're a kid. You look at Cookie Monster

9:05

earnest. He's just about like. Your.

9:07

Own good. He's like. You.

9:09

Know, yeah, identify with that. I

9:12

want cookies all the time to

9:14

for his but and for think

9:16

a more mature person might look

9:18

at it in a darker let's

9:20

call it a darker sort of.

9:23

Life. Yeah, that makes

9:25

sense. You. Know, sometimes people say

9:27

i last to keep from crying like

9:29

a cliche you hear. I do feel

9:31

like there's a zen sense of that

9:34

in your work in that you're getting

9:36

at like deeper issues through the lens

9:38

of humor. Do you relate to that

9:40

idea dog? You see it as something

9:42

you want a spouse. I

9:44

think it's actually the other way around. I

9:47

think I get to humor through the be

9:49

known him through the other stuff and I

9:51

you know I find myself attracted to the.

9:54

Dark. Stuff and then thinking to myself

9:56

oh my god how my I'm asking

9:58

people to like Trudged through the. The

10:00

With me. How can I actually

10:02

get myself and. Other people

10:04

through all of this, it's kind of

10:06

what people do anyway, as you know

10:08

when they're confronted with situations that. Horrible.

10:12

They have to find some way to

10:14

Tude. Not. Necessarily laugh at it

10:16

but in some way to make it

10:18

to get through it took to get

10:21

past it. In in life one encounters

10:23

a lot of situations that are. Horrible.

10:26

Yeah. It's really not too many, but

10:28

I mean we're all sort of bound

10:31

the same way when it comes to

10:33

life. So for have sort of on

10:35

the way to this bad ending. Right

10:37

arm and we have to get through the

10:40

bad endings of other people a lot of

10:42

the time before we meet our own. You

10:44

know we have to get through that and

10:46

in one way of doing it has to.

10:49

To notice all of that sort

10:51

of crazy things that happened that

10:53

are unexpected and not just to

10:55

dwell on, you know that that

10:57

the existential horror that awaits us.

11:00

Because. It isn't all. it

11:02

isn't all depressing, it's all.

11:04

You. Know it's partially funny. It's a

11:06

lot observed. There. A

11:08

lot of sort of crazy questions one

11:10

can ask oneself along the way And

11:12

that, I think if. You. Know

11:15

sort of the way to get through

11:17

life right without being like oh man,

11:19

Why bother to do anything you know

11:21

like? Well, because because the journey. And

11:23

you know, in using satire to wrestle

11:25

with these bigger teams d you feel

11:28

like an egg. You know you've written

11:30

novels and short stories. You feel like

11:32

the way you have to kind of

11:34

pace it or frame it is a

11:36

little different in a short story vs

11:39

in a in a longer form version.

11:42

No, not really. Yeah, it's

11:44

just it's sort of it's

11:46

it's it's kind of lens,

11:48

right? In. With you can. Look.

11:51

at just about anything like it doesn't even doesn't

11:53

even have to be fiction that as the don't

11:55

have to be a short story doesn't have to

11:57

be a novel or to be like i don't

11:59

know of an electrical light socket. It could

12:01

be a play. It could be an

12:04

apple. Yeah.

12:07

Well, like for example, with your recent novel,

12:09

Didn't Nobody Give a Shit? What happened to

12:11

Carlotta? Thank you so much for getting

12:13

the title right. Why do

12:15

people get it wrong? So many people

12:18

have said, don't

12:20

nobody care about Carlotta? I've

12:23

heard everything. Oh, no. The

12:26

novel is based kind of around

12:28

the Odyssey, you know, as a

12:30

reframing of that. Was there something

12:32

in the carceral state that made

12:34

you think of Homer? It

12:37

wasn't exactly that. It was that I

12:39

had started writing the book already. And

12:42

it's about somebody who's coming back from

12:44

traumatic events in upstate New York. And

12:48

if you know upstate New York at all,

12:50

you might have noticed that there

12:52

are a lot of municipalities upstate that

12:54

are named after classical literature, like

12:57

different things in classical literature. And that's

12:59

because of this one guy named Robert

13:01

Harper in the office after

13:03

the Revolutionary War that was like carving

13:05

up indigenous people's land that they had

13:08

took, and giving it

13:10

to Revolutionary War soldiers. This

13:12

guy was a classical literature buff, and he

13:15

was in charge of naming things. And so

13:17

he was just like, okay, let's name it

13:19

after Homer. Let's name

13:21

it. Troy. Okay. And I

13:23

think that actually caught on. I think

13:25

there are more things

13:28

that are named after classical references

13:31

in upstate New York than there are

13:34

ones that he named. So I think it just became

13:36

a kind of trend. It made me

13:38

think of Ithaca. I was like, oh, that gives

13:40

that more context. Yeah, Ithaca. Exactly. That was one

13:42

of the ones I was like, oh, I have to

13:44

use this. So

13:47

I realized that by writing about

13:49

somebody coming back from upstate New

13:51

York and all these classical things,

13:53

I was actually sort of rewriting

13:55

the Odyssey without, you know,

13:58

I always think it's kind of fun to be aware of. of the

14:01

progenitors of the stories you might be

14:04

telling, like literary

14:06

history essentially. This

14:09

idea that there's

14:12

a finite number of stories and

14:15

you just happen to be telling a

14:17

particular one that's already been told. And if

14:19

you can pinpoint which one it is, you

14:22

can work it in there if you find a way to do

14:26

it. It's also kind of

14:28

a tired idea to use

14:31

the Odyssey as a basis for your work. I

14:35

was like, man, you know, everybody has done that.

14:38

But that was the moment at which my

14:40

husband, who is of Irish

14:42

American descent, took me to Ireland for the

14:44

first time. And I brought a copy of

14:46

Ulysses, which I knew to be one of

14:49

the sort of most

14:51

famous examples of a book that takes

14:54

the Odyssey and sort of tries to rework

14:56

it in some way. And I

14:58

thought, I know what I'll do. I'll use

15:00

them both. Wow. I'll

15:03

make it really difficult for myself. So

15:07

that's kind of how that happened. And you're not

15:09

really supposed to know that when you read the

15:11

book. I don't think it's, I think

15:14

it's not at all necessary to know that

15:16

when you read the book. Yeah. But

15:19

if you do and you like the book and

15:21

you want to go back and read the other texts

15:23

that it refers to, then that's

15:26

great. But

15:28

I can't stand books that make you feel like

15:30

you should read other books before you write. Right.

15:34

Right. Right. Your

15:36

gallery work, like the exhibit card tricks is consistently funny. Do you

15:39

like, you know, galleries aren't typically thought of

15:41

as the funniest places. Is there

15:43

a desire to kind of bring more humor

15:46

into your visual work? Well, I

15:48

don't know. I mean, it's something that

15:50

clearly it's something that I do. It's

15:52

something that's part of my practice humor.

15:55

And so I feel like there's I'm never

15:57

going to do anything without like a sort of

15:59

cheeky I don't think I mean maybe I

16:01

will at some point just to. See.

16:03

If I can do a great. Stone.

16:06

But. I know that it's some. It's like

16:08

something that I can do relatively easily.

16:11

And I'm It's not something that everybody

16:13

can do relatively easily, so it's one

16:15

thing that I know can set my

16:17

work apart. right?

16:20

Yeah, And I've always been. You

16:22

know, a not a lot of humorists. Sounds

16:25

funny to call some of them humorous to

16:27

there were so dirty fact that a lot

16:29

of humorists were a huge inspiration to me

16:32

as it as a kid or like people

16:34

who were just funny and weird like Laurie

16:36

Anderson. there. And lastly one

16:38

more question I have as it's

16:40

kind of a broader one. Are

16:42

there any short story writer is

16:44

that you would recommend other people

16:47

that maybe they haven't heard of

16:49

Anyone knew or long overlooked. Ah,

16:51

new or longer were like.

16:53

Susan Steinberg is fantastic. She's

16:55

one room and favorite. She's.

16:58

She's got a kind of experimental

17:00

so I don't think she's a

17:02

good as experimental as other people

17:04

seem to a cause I just

17:06

think she's amazing. I'm an amiable.

17:10

The I really appreciate you taking the

17:12

time a name yet the story was

17:14

wonderful. Something you think you are writing

17:16

a. Lot

17:26

of characters and years. How. Much.

17:29

Like bearings boy. Good at the end

17:31

of that story. Net sites

17:34

in a oysters after every

17:36

tiny screen. Sad torn by

17:38

Natalie Imbruglia. Korea Town steamed.

17:40

Family Karaoke. Lee

17:43

Sin. Maybe it was just time

17:45

time to let go of childish

17:47

things to see them. Lipids for

17:50

what they truly are. Reflections.

17:52

Of those people, that means we

17:54

have those fuzzy monsters. Tiny, but.

17:58

Edu. disagree. When

18:01

I. Know I knew no

18:03

one can take the Muppets away

18:05

from me. In fact, my earpiece

18:07

to censor part of. The

18:10

from. All the local.

18:15

Or show is produced by

18:17

Jennifer Brennan and Mary Simkin.

18:19

Our podcast producer an editor

18:21

is Colleen Pellissier. This episode

18:23

was recorded at the San

18:25

Francisco Sketch Best. Matthew Love

18:27

is their consulting. Producer or

18:30

theme. Song is by putting

18:32

in there. I'm a partner Charla

18:34

thanks for joining us. Bird selected

18:36

Sure it's few for radio.