Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. If you've ever
Speaker 1: picked up an issue of The New Yorker, chances are
Speaker 1: you've seen the work of cartoonist Ro's Chaste. Her characters
Speaker 1: appear to be hastily drawn in colored pencils by a
Speaker 1: clever child while talking on the phone, But on closer examination,
Speaker 1: you recognize the complex emotions that her drawings contain. Though
Speaker 1: their faces are made up of only a few squiggles.
Speaker 1: You spot a look of resentment in the mother, resignation
Speaker 1: in the father, entitlement in the sun, and defiance in
Speaker 1: the daughter. Chaste gives life to the objects around the
Speaker 1: family as well. She trains her eye on what the
Speaker 1: rest of us don't see, archiving the detritus real or imagined,
Speaker 1: that we lead behind in our wake. You could call
Speaker 1: her an anthropologist of human emotions, but Ros's Chaste prefers
Speaker 1: to keep our title simple. I guess a cartoonist. Yeah, cartoonist,
Speaker 1: And how long have you been doing the pieces for
Speaker 1: the New Yorker since when I started in for the
Speaker 1: New Yorker. For the New Yorker, yeah, and did you
Speaker 1: know how does that work? Did you submit and submit
Speaker 1: for eons and eons and finally got accepted or no.
Speaker 1: I had a very strange experience when I got out
Speaker 1: of art school. I was starting to take a portfolio
Speaker 1: around and I was doing cartoons for various places. I
Speaker 1: actually thought I would wind up working for the Village Voice.
Speaker 1: That was sort of my goal, because that's where I
Speaker 1: pictured myself. You know, Jules Feiffer did cartoons for the
Speaker 1: Village Voice, and I thought, well, if I work really
Speaker 1: hard and if I'm really lucky, and if there's a
Speaker 1: receptive editor, that's where I'll be. My parents subscribed The
Speaker 1: New Yorker, and so at some point I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I might as well try them. But I really did
Speaker 1: not think that that was where my cartoons would be because,
Speaker 1: especially in my cartoons were not what they had in
Speaker 1: the magazine, and uh, but I thought, uh, how would
Speaker 1: you describe what was in the magazine? And they were
Speaker 1: mostly single panel cartoons with a gagline underneath a lot
Speaker 1: of them were funny. I liked a lot of the
Speaker 1: art in them. I loved, you know, Charles Adams and
Speaker 1: Ed Coren, Jack Ziegler, there were a lot of Gay
Speaker 1: Wilson when he appeared. There were a lot of cartoons
Speaker 1: that I liked. But I just did not see my
Speaker 1: stuff in there. I guess because of the single panel thing,
Speaker 1: and especially back then, my stuff was lots of panels,
Speaker 1: and they were really really tiny. The boxes were about
Speaker 1: postage stamp sized, and in fact, the editor of The
Speaker 1: New Yorker told me that I had to start making
Speaker 1: them bigger because um, they were just very hard to see.
Speaker 1: But I think, in this sort of logical but sort
Speaker 1: of slightly in main way, I thought, if I just
Speaker 1: draw really small, like, nobody will get really angry with me.
Speaker 1: So anyway, one time, and it was in April of
Speaker 1: seventy eight, I dropped off this portfolio of cartoons to
Speaker 1: The New Yorker. I had called them up and found
Speaker 1: out when they saw stuff over the transome. I didn't
Speaker 1: know anybody there. I didn't know computers the internet paper right,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know how many cartoons. Was the editor
Speaker 1: then William Shaun and uh Lee Lawrence was the cartoon
Speaker 1: the art editor. There was no cartoon editor. He was
Speaker 1: in charge of all the art, the covers, the inside.
Speaker 1: You know, there wasn't that much art. There was the cartoons,
Speaker 1: there was the covers. They were spot drawings, and that
Speaker 1: was pretty much it. When I came back next week
Speaker 1: to pick them up. I had about sixty cartoons in there.
Speaker 1: I really did not know what I was doing. There
Speaker 1: was a note from him to come back and see him.
Speaker 1: Turned out i'd sold a cartoon and he told me
Speaker 1: to come back every week. So that's kind of what
Speaker 1: I've been doing. Would you would say that you're in
Speaker 1: the if they do they do double issues, so they
Speaker 1: probably put out what about fifty issues or forty eight
Speaker 1: issues a year, something like that, And you'd say that
Speaker 1: you appear in the magazine how often per year? It
Speaker 1: goes on streaks? I mean it's uh, they'll take whatever
Speaker 1: you've got. No, no, I mean it's weird stuff you
Speaker 1: send them, no tons because I mean they reject at
Speaker 1: least of the stuff you submit. Yes, the way, there's
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe forty cartoonists on staff, and we
Speaker 1: all submit a group of cartoons. Every week. I send
Speaker 1: in usually six to eight cartoons, and um, sometimes they
Speaker 1: take one, sometimes they don't take any. Every blue moon
Speaker 1: they take too. But the overwhelming majority of what I
Speaker 1: turned in is rejected. Where does that go? It goes
Speaker 1: on top of my file cabinet with its other reject brethren,
Speaker 1: the graveyard, Graveyard chest imagination. Yeah, but you know, then
Speaker 1: I publish somewhere else. I used to do sonics cartoons
Speaker 1: for a Scientific American UM and read book. Uh, you
Speaker 1: don't put them online on a website. That is ross
Speaker 1: chess rejected cartoons, man, I so they don't go on
Speaker 1: a website website, Okay, Now, Crumbler and UM, so much trouble,
Speaker 1: so much trouble, and they're just bad anyway, And anyway,
Speaker 1: sometimes I redraw them and and I reworked them. And
Speaker 1: you know, because if I'm really stubborn about a joke,
Speaker 1: if I think this could be a good joke, if
Speaker 1: I just need to make it better, you know. So
Speaker 1: where did you go to art school? I went to
Speaker 1: Rhode Island School of Design. You went to Rid, Right,
Speaker 1: What did you study there? You study art? And I
Speaker 1: started out. I started out in graphic design because I
Speaker 1: thought I would be practical, and I hated it. It
Speaker 1: was just, you know, a lot of it's like this
Speaker 1: was about learning to be neat and measure exactly, and uh,
Speaker 1: I really was not good at that. I had been
Speaker 1: cartooning since you were a child. Yeah, you started when
Speaker 1: you were young. I started when I was really little.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of it had to do
Speaker 1: with that I was an only child and my parents
Speaker 1: were a lot older, and there was one way to
Speaker 1: kind of keep me entertain after Known'm kidding, ha ha.
Speaker 1: And the chasti and psychological condition was that in the
Speaker 1: early drawings as well. Oh, I think ross chest as
Speaker 1: a child, what's the point help me going to the library?
Speaker 1: I like the library. What's the point of going to
Speaker 1: the movies? We have snacks at home. No. I think
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I drew everything. I mean
Speaker 1: I like to draw people. I liked, you know, funny
Speaker 1: remarks and conversations and yeah, you know, I just like
Speaker 1: to draw. And then when you left Wristee, what did
Speaker 1: you do before you started? I'm not coming who. You
Speaker 1: became with the New Yorker and so you graduated risdy
Speaker 1: Win in so it was only a year before you
Speaker 1: submitted to Sean. Yeah, yeah, so it was actually less
Speaker 1: the other work you do as an artist during that
Speaker 1: period of time. I mean, do you wind up? Is
Speaker 1: this the beginning of you making your living as a
Speaker 1: cartoonist right away? Um? I started out actually doing illustrations.
Speaker 1: They were terrible. I was doing cartoons on my own,
Speaker 1: but I never thought that I would be able to
Speaker 1: make a living at first as a cartoonist. You know,
Speaker 1: I was living in my parents apartment and that was enough,
Speaker 1: and I sort of made up a weird illustration style
Speaker 1: that was like a pastiche of all the popular styles
Speaker 1: of the day, and they were pretty terrible. I did
Speaker 1: not get much work, and at some point I just thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm just going to try submitting the
Speaker 1: cartoons because this is really what I like to do,
Speaker 1: and at least if nobody takes them, then i'll know that,
Speaker 1: you know, I tried. So I don't know if I
Speaker 1: even thought it out that far, or whether it was
Speaker 1: really that the illustrations weren't getting any work at all.
Speaker 1: And when I started doing the cartoons, that's when I
Speaker 1: started getting work. I started selling to do the illustrations
Speaker 1: look like were they in? They're not in the style?
Speaker 1: When when you're when you're an artist and you do illustrations,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's like you draw birds like Audubon, you
Speaker 1: don't draw birds like Ross Chest draws cartoons and people.
Speaker 1: They're not squiggly lines of people with their hands up
Speaker 1: around their mouths. They were just like these fake kind
Speaker 1: of Milton Glazer mixed with a little weird abstract e
Speaker 1: kind of junk. Because at Rizzy, I was taught like,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be too tight when you draw,
Speaker 1: so there was like a kind of like fake loose
Speaker 1: kind of thing tossed off. Well they were not tossed off.
Speaker 1: They were fake loose, you know. They were like to
Speaker 1: look like they were just horrible, and I didn't like
Speaker 1: doing them. I mean, that was the worst part. It
Speaker 1: was just someone that taught you then, who helped you
Speaker 1: that you remember, who was a great mentor of yours.
Speaker 1: Um I was in high school. I went to the
Speaker 1: Art Students League on week on. It was one Saturday
Speaker 1: a month, and I had yeah, yeah, and that's I mean,
Speaker 1: I could not say that I know anatomy my any
Speaker 1: stretch of the imagination, but it's where I took a
Speaker 1: lot of figure drawing and I loved the Art Students League,
Speaker 1: and I had an amazing teacher there named Andrew Lucash.
Speaker 1: I like that a lot. When you start working with
Speaker 1: for the New Yorker. How long does it go on
Speaker 1: before you're making a living just doing that? Um, I
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever I've always done other things illustrations,
Speaker 1: um and tossed off kind of phone. Know. What happened
Speaker 1: was once my style got known through the New Yorker,
Speaker 1: then people would hire me because it was okay to
Speaker 1: draw my style. And uh, I remember doing some illustration.
Speaker 1: I think what was that magazine? It wasn't called I
Speaker 1: can't remember. Maybe it was it have been missed, I
Speaker 1: can't remember. Somebody's closet. It was just like I had
Speaker 1: all these clothes and these arrows with words like sick, yuck,
Speaker 1: throw out, you know, and it was like I couldn't
Speaker 1: incorporate the jokes and the writing into the illustrations. And
Speaker 1: so you know, in the years after that, after my
Speaker 1: cartoon started appearing in New Yorker, I was able to
Speaker 1: get illustration work, but they knew what I did. I mean,
Speaker 1: every once in a while, something weird would happen, like, UM,
Speaker 1: a magazine would say. I think it was seventeen magazine.
Speaker 1: I I illustrated a booklet for teenagers about I don't
Speaker 1: even manners or something, and they said, could you make
Speaker 1: your people look more contemporary? And I thought, they don't
Speaker 1: look contemporary? You know. I just thought, well, this is
Speaker 1: how I draw contemporary people, you know, I mean, what
Speaker 1: are they supposed to wear a different sort of hair
Speaker 1: band or something. I just I don't know. It's just like,
Speaker 1: no matter what I put on my characters, they look
Speaker 1: how they look. They said, okay, and then we went
Speaker 1: on from there. Sean was the editor when your first
Speaker 1: commit was got Leeb. Next after that it was Sean Gottlieb,
Speaker 1: Tina and David. How does that change the perception of
Speaker 1: your work? Editor to editor and then art director and
Speaker 1: cartoon editor and on and on. Have you had a
Speaker 1: different reception for your work over the last several years? Um?
Speaker 1: I was very panicky when Tina Brown took over, because
Speaker 1: I think several people were because I had the impression
Speaker 1: that she liked only topical stuff. And I think that
Speaker 1: that a lot of my cartoons during that time became
Speaker 1: more topical. But the thing with very topical cartoons is
Speaker 1: you know, you can't really include them in a collection.
Speaker 1: I mean, who really cares about Monica Lewinsky joke right now?
Speaker 1: So you know, I felt like if I could do
Speaker 1: them in a way that was still my stuff, it
Speaker 1: was all right. But um, that were your fears assuaged?
Speaker 1: Once she got there, that she get your it was
Speaker 1: all right, it was okay. But I think there is
Speaker 1: some differences. I think so, I think so, um, and
Speaker 1: who knows how much of it was in my own,
Speaker 1: you know projection. Another thing I thought about was just
Speaker 1: pure writing. Have you done a lot of writing and
Speaker 1: do you do writing aside from doing the cartooning, because
Speaker 1: so much of what you do involves writing. In this
Speaker 1: book that you have about now is so beautifully written
Speaker 1: in terms of the honesty and the well, thank you,
Speaker 1: thanks um. I think that one thing I have always
Speaker 1: loved about cartoons is that they have writing and they
Speaker 1: have pictures. And it's not just like an illustration. In
Speaker 1: the best cartoons, the best graphic novels graphic uh you know, storytelling,
Speaker 1: The words and the pictures play off each other. The
Speaker 1: illustration is not necessarily a literal illustration of the words
Speaker 1: that you see on the page. It could be moving
Speaker 1: the story forward or back, or could be like in
Speaker 1: total contradiction to what's written. Um, there's some sort of
Speaker 1: thing going on between the two of them. And what
Speaker 1: I love is that I don't have to choose. Like
Speaker 1: in this book, there are times where a picture served,
Speaker 1: you know, best, to tell what I wanted to tell,
Speaker 1: And there were parts where I really wanted it needed
Speaker 1: to be all text. You know, the pictures would not
Speaker 1: have helped, would have in fact attracted. And I do
Speaker 1: like to write. I have written, Um, I've written for
Speaker 1: The New Yorker, I've written a Talk of the Town piece,
Speaker 1: I wrote shouts and murmurs. I've written an obituary um
Speaker 1: for uh wonderful cartoonist Leo Collum. Um. I like to write.
Speaker 1: I like to write mostly though, UM, I like cartoons.
Speaker 1: You do, Yeah, Are you much of a television watcher?
Speaker 1: Someone who's who's very funny and and humorist certainly applies
Speaker 1: to you when your work, Like any good cartoonist. Um,
Speaker 1: what kind of television do you watch? Oh? God, I
Speaker 1: love so many of these, you know, repeating the series
Speaker 1: that have been on. Oh my god, I watched yeah
Speaker 1: Bench last night, I watched three episodes of broad Church,
Speaker 1: British show. Um about a little kid who's murdered and
Speaker 1: broad Church is the name of the town. Um, I've
Speaker 1: watched that. I watched broad City, Girls, Madman, What's the
Speaker 1: Wire of No? No, broad City though it was funny.
Speaker 1: Not a sitcom watcher. No, I'm not much of a
Speaker 1: sitcom watcher. Um, I watched sits. Know. When I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I watched a ton of sitcotts, Bewitched, Green Acres,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was obsessed with Bewitched. Where's the Agnes
Speaker 1: More ahead of today? Oh my god, I can still
Speaker 1: hear the credits in my head. I watched Beverly Hillbilly's Island,
Speaker 1: Gilligan's Island, totally yeah. I mean I still see a
Speaker 1: lot of people in terms of Guilden's Island. I still
Speaker 1: have dreams about Ginger. Oh my god, say, at least
Speaker 1: is not like Gilligan weird tied up to a tree
Speaker 1: in my dream Gilligan in this skipper, they're on the
Speaker 1: other side of the island doing the laundry quote unquote
Speaker 1: with I say, I say. And the last TV show
Speaker 1: until the Sopranos came along that I watched with any
Speaker 1: devotion was Mary Hartman. Mary Hartman, Yes, and I was
Speaker 1: addicted to the weirdness of that show. When I was like,
Speaker 1: I forget sixteen or see, I did sort of get
Speaker 1: into the Mary Tyler Moore show. And there were a
Speaker 1: couple of years when I first got out of college.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was the first year I got out of
Speaker 1: college where I was living in the apartment, living in
Speaker 1: my first apartment. Actually it was when I got out
Speaker 1: of college, when I still living at home for a
Speaker 1: while and then I moved into my own apartment that
Speaker 1: I didn't really have much of a social life, let's
Speaker 1: put it that way. And working. I was working, and
Speaker 1: I was working on my cartoons, and I was mostly
Speaker 1: mostly pretty depressed. Big shock, because well I was living
Speaker 1: at home and I just thought, this is still at
Speaker 1: home with my parents in Brooklyn, and I thought this
Speaker 1: is my life. I was twenty two, twenty two, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to fill my time. I think
Speaker 1: that was another thing that like, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: so different now with the Internet, but before it was
Speaker 1: like there were these stretches. I mean, I was also
Speaker 1: in love with this guy and it wasn't reciprocal. Um,
Speaker 1: what do do he was a painter U school. He
Speaker 1: was yeah, yeah, um yeah. But anyway, uh so it
Speaker 1: was it was a very depressing time. And I used
Speaker 1: to watch the Mary Charler Wore Show and also The
Speaker 1: Odd Couple, and there were these things that sort of
Speaker 1: like like I knew if I got to those shows,
Speaker 1: I would like live through the day. It's hard to
Speaker 1: sort of explain, but remember that those shows made me
Speaker 1: feel more. Yeah, they would pay that they'd play that
Speaker 1: opening and gone with the wind. I told someone I
Speaker 1: spent you're a real New Yorker. I spent six months
Speaker 1: on the internet, surfing the carters and the baffles and
Speaker 1: the warrens of YouTube to find the voice of the
Speaker 1: man that was the voice of my childhood. Now, it's
Speaker 1: interesting that you remember the voices. I don't remember that that.
Speaker 1: I remember that Clapboard like really, well, which one do
Speaker 1: you remember? That? Was the four thirty movie? No? That
Speaker 1: was that? That was? I think that the Million Dollar
Speaker 1: movie was the Clapboard was later one? Um, the four
Speaker 1: thirty movie I think had a kind of grandfather clock
Speaker 1: kind of I don't want I don't want to be
Speaker 1: taking you on in the music was do I think
Speaker 1: I've got you here. I don't mean to be lecturing Roch,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to tell you the clapboard and the
Speaker 1: camera on the dolly was the four thirty movie. That
Speaker 1: was the slate the Maybe I'm remembering something really long ago.
Speaker 1: You have been breathing in a lot of chemicals there
Speaker 1: in your cartooning studio, and your memory is failing you.
Speaker 1: The one you're referring to as a famous piece called
Speaker 1: syncopated clock, and that was the Late Show on CBS
Speaker 1: and the Late Late Show on CBS. So the clapboard
Speaker 1: was the ABC. But when did you realize that that
Speaker 1: was a clapartelling this the clapboard in the Okay, sol See,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I thought it was like a black
Speaker 1: thank you. I didn't know what it was until I
Speaker 1: was much older. A clapboard. It looked like it looked
Speaker 1: like a weird flashboard to me. You were depressed back then.
Speaker 1: The painter wasn't around. You're looking with your parents and
Speaker 1: crazy Ville. How old were you when you moved out
Speaker 1: of the apartment, Uh, twenty three, So you're just there
Speaker 1: for a year, just there for you about yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And then you moved toward to Manhattan. Yes, moved to Manhattan,
Speaker 1: a wonderful apartment on seventy third Street, loved one between
Speaker 1: Amsterdam and Columbus area. It was wonderful. It was it was,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of raddy back then. Not terrible, but
Speaker 1: it was the wild wild West back Yeah, it was raddy.
Speaker 1: You know, they were like linoleum stores in secondhand clothing stores.
Speaker 1: Tinchers was still on Broadway, yes, And the prostitutes used
Speaker 1: to wear like faux fur coats and approach you on Broadway. Yes.
Speaker 1: And as you went up on Amsterdam Avenue, people in
Speaker 1: the summer with like barbecue out of their cars. And
Speaker 1: I remember that because the painter that I like lived
Speaker 1: on two Street in Amsterdam. And whence you crossed like
Speaker 1: seventy nine Street, you were just like, I don't even
Speaker 1: know where I am. How old were you when you
Speaker 1: met your husband? So this is again like a year
Speaker 1: or two later when you met him, were at the
Speaker 1: New Yorker. Well, you know you New Yorker people all
Speaker 1: just commingle, yes, pretty much so much. Yeah, and only
Speaker 1: another New Yorker staff member can understand just you know,
Speaker 1: these are the people we know and really cross paths.
Speaker 1: What did he do? Yeah, Bill. He's a writer, and
Speaker 1: what does he right? Predominantly short humor, talking the town
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Well, now's some reason why the
Speaker 1: lights in here. Like, I'm surprised, and I'm coming into
Speaker 1: this interview with you having read your cartoons and loved
Speaker 1: your cartoons, and I am a great cavelling, cavetching, whining
Speaker 1: bundle of insecurity myself. I am. I'm a ball of insecurity.
Speaker 1: And for you, of all people, I've got all these
Speaker 1: presumptions about you to ask about the power fluctuations in
Speaker 1: an old apartment building. I'm just surprised, this is an
Speaker 1: old apartment building to take up this carpet his linoleum there, Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I come completely Joseph's Temple of communication explanation. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure about you don't have some neurological disorder.
Speaker 1: You don't have any neurological disorder as far as I know.
Speaker 1: You know, it's but just you know, there's just things
Speaker 1: going on, electrical things going on. Was trying to talk
Speaker 1: to Charles Schultz is trying to talk to you. He's
Speaker 1: born on my birthday. Actually, really, yes, what did you
Speaker 1: think of that cartoon? Peanuts? When I was younger, I
Speaker 1: liked it a lot. I still think it has some
Speaker 1: fantastic archetypes, but you know, it's not completely my cup
Speaker 1: of tea, but I like it. Charles Adams probably Jane Wilson,
Speaker 1: Charles Adams sort of more odd. Tim Burton definitely definitely.
Speaker 1: Chat said she loved Charles Adams work when she was
Speaker 1: young because, quote, it made fun of stuff you weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to make fun of. Unquote. It's clear she wasn't
Speaker 1: your average kid growing up in Brooklyn in the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties. In her cartoon A Note on the Author,
Speaker 1: Chaste drew her nine year old self reading the Big
Speaker 1: Book of Horrible Rare Diseases. I'm Alec Baldwin, and here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Take a listen to our archive more in
Speaker 1: depth conversations with artists, policymakers, and performers like Lena Dunham.
Speaker 1: Dunham and Chast both talk to me about their early years,
Speaker 1: but Dunham's plans for her future were way off. Always
Speaker 1: thought I would be like a weird gender and women
Speaker 1: studies teacher who occasionally showed movies at film festivals and
Speaker 1: hung out in my strange apartment that was stacked high
Speaker 1: with books. Take a listen at Here's the Thing dot Org.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Ra's Chast. Can We talk About
Speaker 1: Something more Pleasant? Her graphic memoir about taking care of
Speaker 1: her elderly parents in their final years, was nominated for
Speaker 1: a National Book Award last year. Along with her drawings
Speaker 1: that told the story of her parents, the book includes
Speaker 1: actual photographs of the objects they left behind. While cleaning
Speaker 1: out her parents fridge, Chast found an invention of her
Speaker 1: mother's from the sixties made from mismatched tupperware held together
Speaker 1: with masking tape, called the cheese Tailor. Chast says anything
Speaker 1: to do with death is funny, but the emotional honesty
Speaker 1: of her book produced more than just laughs. The New
Speaker 1: York Times called can We Talk as ambitious, raw and
Speaker 1: personal as anything she has produced. Yeah. This is definitely
Speaker 1: the most personal and how would you describe it? The
Speaker 1: book is called can't We I'm sorry, Can't We talk
Speaker 1: about Something more Pleasant? Which comes from my father. That's
Speaker 1: something that he would say anytime a topic that was
Speaker 1: a little dicey would come up. Because my mother loved
Speaker 1: talking about like weird illnesses than friends of hers had,
Speaker 1: Like you know, did you hear about Shirley She has
Speaker 1: like blood coming out of her right ear, blood and puss,
Speaker 1: and she was just sitting in the Chinese restrust. Actually
Speaker 1: it was like it started at blood, then pus, then
Speaker 1: it started shifting, then it was blood an enormous amen.
Speaker 1: And then my father would just say, can't we talk
Speaker 1: about so my mother? You and I are going to
Speaker 1: go back and forth about our mother's and my family.
Speaker 1: We we make fun of my mother because my mother
Speaker 1: will not have six degrees of separation. She'll have a
Speaker 1: hundred and six degrees of separation from someone and yet
Speaker 1: feel the pain of someone she could never possibly meet.
Speaker 1: Or No, she loved tragedy. She was addicted to tragedy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the drama thing, drama, melodrama. Tell me about the genesis
Speaker 1: of this book, if you will. Well, I think in
Speaker 1: my head I do sort of take notes on things.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of cartoons in this book. Well,
Speaker 1: I was telling you earlier about how every week I
Speaker 1: submit around six or eight cartoons. So and then you
Speaker 1: were asking me about the rejects on top with the
Speaker 1: file cabinet. Some of these cartoons, like the one with
Speaker 1: the oven mitt, there were things that I did when
Speaker 1: I would go visit my parents, and I would have
Speaker 1: like a sort of insane conversation with my mother about
Speaker 1: that was you know this oven mit, which was uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, who patches an oven mit? They cost like
Speaker 1: four And this was before this was way before she
Speaker 1: was you know, she was still grocery shopping, so I
Speaker 1: know she could have bought an oven mit and it
Speaker 1: was patched with a skirt that I had made in
Speaker 1: seventh grade home economics class, and I could not understand
Speaker 1: why she still had it, you know. But then you know,
Speaker 1: as it became clear she they never threw anything away ever, ever, ever, ever,
Speaker 1: They just kind of like shoved it farther back in
Speaker 1: the closet. Um. And uh so, yes, they were kind
Speaker 1: of hoarders and um, borderline hoarders, I think. I mean
Speaker 1: they were not rats like scurrying. I mean I have
Speaker 1: watched the Hoarders. They were, Yes, yes, they were were
Speaker 1: you know, farm lee Cord hoarders. So some of the cartoons,
Speaker 1: like the that the cheese dan Ish one, there's probably
Speaker 1: ten or twenty in the book that I did, not
Speaker 1: thinking in any way that they would become part of
Speaker 1: a book, but that I did, you know, within a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks of the incident happening, or the Theuigia
Speaker 1: board one, you know where when my father was dying
Speaker 1: and I my daughter was doing Wigia board with some
Speaker 1: friends in her room, and you know, I barely was touching.
Speaker 1: And I'm with my daughter and a couple of friends.
Speaker 1: They're like sixteen years old, and the thing spells out,
Speaker 1: you know, heaven beckons. I. Oh, I asked it, I
Speaker 1: should say, I asked, Luigia board, is Grandpa going to
Speaker 1: die soon? And my daughter was like, mom, that's so morbid.
Speaker 1: But it was the first question that popped into my head.
Speaker 1: So I asked it. And I was not touching the
Speaker 1: plant chat you know, I was just like my hands
Speaker 1: were like touching two adams worth because I was partly
Speaker 1: curious to see, like where are these kids going to
Speaker 1: move it? You know, and you know, so I wrote
Speaker 1: that up. So so that's the genesis. But the genesis
Speaker 1: from the book, I think it just sort of started
Speaker 1: to fall together, probably like when you photographed the objects
Speaker 1: in the house. There's that little piece in the book.
Speaker 1: We have photographs of the pencil drawer, and these are
Speaker 1: these wonderfully plane and simple things that there are snapshots
Speaker 1: at all of us say that's that, this is how
Speaker 1: we live. When you were doing that, were you saying
Speaker 1: to yourself, I'm gonna put this down into a book
Speaker 1: of some kind. Before that, I think that, well, I was.
Speaker 1: I knew I was getting rid of almost everything in
Speaker 1: the apartment, and I wanted memories of it. I think
Speaker 1: that I thought it's the same way that when something
Speaker 1: is interesting, I think somehow this might be useful, and
Speaker 1: maybe in some very vague I was thinking about a book,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I really thought about I wasn't
Speaker 1: really thinking of this because I didn't even have a
Speaker 1: title for it for the longest time, or how it
Speaker 1: would be structured, or whether it could be a book.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know whether it could really be a book,
Speaker 1: or how I would use the photograph. So a lot
Speaker 1: of it just kind of came together more later. So
Speaker 1: for you, you didn't decide until when. When did you
Speaker 1: sit there and go, I want to get this on paper.
Speaker 1: This my feelings about my parents, I think probably, and
Speaker 1: why somewhere between my father's death and my mother's death
Speaker 1: somewhere in there. And why, I think because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to forget, and I just I just knew that
Speaker 1: if I did not get it down, I would forget.
Speaker 1: I would uh, I'd forget how they sounded, I'd forget.
Speaker 1: It's an instinct all of us have to some degree,
Speaker 1: I mean normal people. Yeah, I think so. I want
Speaker 1: to chronicle that in some way. I definitely think so.
Speaker 1: I think it's why we tell stories. I think it's
Speaker 1: why we tell our friends, Oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: what or why you know we don't because maybe we
Speaker 1: don't want to remember. We videotape our children out within
Speaker 1: an inch of their lives right right. What people take
Speaker 1: self is because you don't want to forget, and you
Speaker 1: know on some level that it's all just going to
Speaker 1: become like, you know, just like what did I have
Speaker 1: for dinner? Guess I have no idea. I don't remember.
Speaker 1: You were closer to your dad than your mom, definitely,
Speaker 1: both of your parents being older parents was one of
Speaker 1: the things you credited with them leaving you alone to draw. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I think that they were a lot of
Speaker 1: alone time, and most of their friends did not have children.
Speaker 1: They were just you know a lot of school teacher
Speaker 1: friends who some of them were you know, bachelor's or bachelorettes. Uh,
Speaker 1: and just or couples that prefer to travel or go
Speaker 1: to lectures or you know, go to the opera, and
Speaker 1: they did not want to be burdened with children. And
Speaker 1: both of my parents, I think we're sort of in
Speaker 1: that category. And as I mentioned in this book, they
Speaker 1: did have a child, baby that my mother lost. Um No,
Speaker 1: she did not like lose it in the supermarket. She
Speaker 1: lost the baby at seven and a half months. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think they were very afraid to try again.
Speaker 1: And then I was born to them when they were
Speaker 1: in their forties, but they were old. They were like
Speaker 1: an old forties. They were you know, you could see
Speaker 1: from that photo that my mother wore blouses that buttoned
Speaker 1: up the back. I don't even know where you get
Speaker 1: these kind of blouses, you know. She she wore like
Speaker 1: blouses with like the plaquette in the front, blouses. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: I never saw her wear like a button down shirt
Speaker 1: or any kind from she was she was born. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were both grew up in Manhattan, East Harlem, both
Speaker 1: New Yorkers. Yes, they were both born in this country,
Speaker 1: but all of their grandparents were from Russia. And both
Speaker 1: your parents were school teachers. Yes, for a long time.
Speaker 1: In fact, my mother was Woody Allen's teacher. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, strange, Um, and he remembers her. Well, describe
Speaker 1: your okay. She was very tough. She was well, you
Speaker 1: asked me if they were school teachers. My mother became
Speaker 1: an assistant principal, a job for which she was perfectly suited.
Speaker 1: She was a disciplinarian. She was somebody. She was about
Speaker 1: five to then. She shrunk as she got older. Was
Speaker 1: a very tiny spark club more like a fire hydrant.
Speaker 1: She was short, and she was very very strong, and
Speaker 1: she was heavy, and she was zofted. She was very smart.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say, I mean she went to Hunter College,
Speaker 1: my father went to City College. Um. She was very
Speaker 1: very bright. Uh. She was good in a crisis. She
Speaker 1: would be the kind she was, would be a great administrator.
Speaker 1: She was very tough. It's a very capable, very very capable,
Speaker 1: very tough. I think she resented that. Um. As a woman,
Speaker 1: she was not going to necessarily get the same sorts
Speaker 1: of promotions as like men who were much you know,
Speaker 1: less capable than her. Uh. I think that there's a
Speaker 1: kind of like then diagram where some of these skills
Speaker 1: overlap with the skills of being a mom and some
Speaker 1: of them really do not. And uh, she was very uncompromising,
Speaker 1: and I think to be a parent it involves a
Speaker 1: lot of compromise and can be too vigorously honest and apparently, no,
Speaker 1: you can't be too rigorously honest, and you can't be
Speaker 1: too strict. You can't be too rigid. You know, she
Speaker 1: she was rigid, She would rog She had her view
Speaker 1: of the world and the way things should be. This
Speaker 1: is the woman that had the cheese tainer. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: my favorite. In fact, I think my mother chose that
Speaker 1: she would rather stick to her guns about something that
Speaker 1: she thought was right and have me hate her then
Speaker 1: look for some other way of doing this. Do you
Speaker 1: think your mother sensed the tension between the two of you.
Speaker 1: I think she did. Was almost like she knew. Did
Speaker 1: she know that even she knew this could have gone
Speaker 1: a lot better? No, I don't think she did. I
Speaker 1: think that was the thing that was sort of hard
Speaker 1: to take that I think we would she had empathy,
Speaker 1: but she or she had something I don't know what
Speaker 1: she had, but whatever it was, we the two of
Speaker 1: us were so completely different, like just cut from such
Speaker 1: too completely to use this horrible cliche pieces of cloth,
Speaker 1: not my fabric from seventh grade. Um that there was
Speaker 1: just no way she could even understand. How did that
Speaker 1: influence you raising your child? You have a boy and
Speaker 1: a girl. Yeah, it was totally different. I mean when
Speaker 1: she would say things, your kids set the house on fire.
Speaker 1: Oh well, just short of that. I mean, you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know you made cartoons about you as a mother.
Speaker 1: I have I had to you, Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: have a whole cartoon about being a wimp mom. Where
Speaker 1: when my son was about like three or four, you
Speaker 1: know those kind of crazy arguments where you're like you're
Speaker 1: reading a book about dinosaurs and you go, dinosaurs were very,
Speaker 1: very big, and the kid is in a certain pissy
Speaker 1: moved they go, no, they weren't. And so I think
Speaker 1: my response was, you're right, dinosaurs were as tiny as peas.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, but anyway, I remember when she
Speaker 1: would say, when I would be like incredibly angry, she
Speaker 1: would say, when you have children of your own, you'll understand.
Speaker 1: And I knew I wouldn't you know. I understand, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll understand. I'm going to do something. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to not have a relationship. Is the family
Speaker 1: with his one child. In my family, there were six children,
Speaker 1: and money was just a constant, you know, it was
Speaker 1: just a metronomic reality. Where did you grow up? Massive
Speaker 1: Pequa Long Island part of residential Long Island? King corn stamps?
Speaker 1: Did you snake stamps? Back when they had the old
Speaker 1: and in the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company? Yes, well,
Speaker 1: we used to drink tang Tan had tang for breakfast.
Speaker 1: My father would make us tang is what the astronauts
Speaker 1: had been told. It was really sugar some tan. I
Speaker 1: want to believe tang is out there. You can probably
Speaker 1: get it on some like weird strawberry quick. We were drinking,
Speaker 1: you know, our parents just let us not eat whatever
Speaker 1: we wanted to. But pretty close. What did your parents
Speaker 1: think about it? And I'm assuming they certainly picked up
Speaker 1: at least allow that. Maybe your father did. Your father
Speaker 1: was a pretty bright guy. Yeah, they were both bright.
Speaker 1: We're both both bright. But your your father seemed have
Speaker 1: more of a sense of humor than your mother. I
Speaker 1: don't know not they They just had a different sense
Speaker 1: if you're very old fashioned. Did they know that they
Speaker 1: were these the font of a lot of the humor
Speaker 1: in your cartoons? M I think that my mother sort
Speaker 1: of new. I think that they did. Yes, yes, they
Speaker 1: did it. I always has denied it, and I would say,
Speaker 1: I'd say, Mom, this is not you, this is this
Speaker 1: is a sort of mom, it's a different different but
Speaker 1: this of course, you know, they did not see this
Speaker 1: book for obvious reasons, and it is not a book
Speaker 1: that I could have written while they were alive. Definitely
Speaker 1: not your Is your husband from the same kind of family? No, No,
Speaker 1: he's from opposite land personally big pies. Yes, oh definitely
Speaker 1: midwestern Minnesota. Yes, yes, and I wat yes, yes, I've
Speaker 1: watched home movies of his family and they're all like
Speaker 1: attractive and happy and they're like playing. Yes, yes, they're
Speaker 1: like healthy, there courses of the dinner, they're going to
Speaker 1: split some more wood. Yes, they're attractive. They get along
Speaker 1: with each other theirs. No, I mean I've seen like
Speaker 1: family photos and they're like setibiotics. What is that? Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I have family photos that are not in
Speaker 1: this book of like my relatives and they're like sitting
Speaker 1: around like the dieting table with bottles of manis chevits
Speaker 1: and those kind of seltzer bottles, and and like they're
Speaker 1: one of them is actually wearing a babushka and they
Speaker 1: look so glum. They look like they're just about to
Speaker 1: get slaughtered. It is. And then they're just not smiling.
Speaker 1: They look just his family, my family, my family, these
Speaker 1: old black and white photos and they're just grim. And
Speaker 1: you say to his family, say, is there any depression
Speaker 1: in your family? After a pause, they say, well, there
Speaker 1: was a sink hole out by the well ones back
Speaker 1: in the then there's just nothing. No, well they you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're Scandinavian, so there is that dark side, but
Speaker 1: that's natural essentially. But yes, but you don't talk about it.
Speaker 1: You just don't talk about You don't talk about it,
Speaker 1: and you make the best and you know, you have
Speaker 1: a drink or you you know, go out, Oh, we
Speaker 1: discovered a really nice restaurant out on route and they
Speaker 1: have But that aren't they onto something? Don't we find
Speaker 1: that as we get older? Isn't that just the answer?
Speaker 1: Someone said to me, what do you require? Had some life?
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna be fifty seven years old. I said,
Speaker 1: I want a good reading lamp. I need a good
Speaker 1: radio wherever I go. I'm a radio addict. I said
Speaker 1: I need a good cup of coffee. I mean I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't need five star hotels. I don't need private jets.
Speaker 1: I mean all these things that might have been a
Speaker 1: part of in my in my deck, I don't need
Speaker 1: any of that anymore. You know, I need a good uh,
Speaker 1: a good fireplace. Very simple needs spring, Scandinavian needs, yes side.
Speaker 1: Well maybe that's like when you get older, it's like,
Speaker 1: do we all become more Scandina, Yes, we all, We're
Speaker 1: all like going towards the Scandinavian side. Tell me about
Speaker 1: your dad in his relationship with your mom. She wore
Speaker 1: the pants. She pretty much bore the pants. Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: I think she helped him a lot. He clung to her.
Speaker 1: She knew what to do, she drove. She was internal relationship,
Speaker 1: which many men back then did. Yes, he went from
Speaker 1: his mother who was you know, she was actually I
Speaker 1: think kind of nuts. I mean literally, she slept across
Speaker 1: the foot of his bed until he was twenty one.
Speaker 1: She was bat She was kind of like a borderline
Speaker 1: bagged and he needed to marry some another woman to
Speaker 1: take care of. Yes, exactly had a little bit of
Speaker 1: an edge to her. Yes, Yes, very hard to please someone,
Speaker 1: hard to please someone who I think he probably read,
Speaker 1: you know, being screened at as love, you know, and
Speaker 1: also that she would mention because I care. Because I care,
Speaker 1: I will tell you the right thing to do, and
Speaker 1: I will yell at you if you don't do it right.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is how I show my love
Speaker 1: and I will always take care of you. And she
Speaker 1: always did, she always, But it was and it was
Speaker 1: very much, you know, between the two of them. You know.
Speaker 1: The death of my dad was just the seismic event.
Speaker 1: He was five years old, and it was probably it
Speaker 1: was so painful because I couldn't do anything for him.
Speaker 1: Once I made it, you know, I made it, and
Speaker 1: I made more money than I could ever spend. And
Speaker 1: I think to myself, what I wouldn't do to buy
Speaker 1: my dad a car, house, a camel hair coat? Did
Speaker 1: he want that sort of stuff? I mean I bought
Speaker 1: I never had a chance to find. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess that's I mean. I bought stuff. I mean I
Speaker 1: didn't make that kind of money, but still I wanted
Speaker 1: my parents had. Their clothing had was ratty, you know,
Speaker 1: and I would buy sometimes stuff, you know, LLB and
Speaker 1: I would send them stuff. But when I cleaned out
Speaker 1: the apartment, I found bags of unopened stuff. I think
Speaker 1: occasionally my father would wear a sweater that I had gotten.
Speaker 1: But like the kind of pants that he wore. He wore,
Speaker 1: I think of them as man pants. They were like
Speaker 1: those kind of gray slacks with a crease down the front.
Speaker 1: I never saw him in jeans or khakis, or chinos
Speaker 1: or quarter pants. By the way, man pants, I wear
Speaker 1: gray will blend pants. That's what he wore New York
Speaker 1: man wear. Because you can come home and just throw
Speaker 1: on a button down shirt and a blazer and you're
Speaker 1: off to a cocktail party. Well, my father was not
Speaker 1: going to any cocktail pread wasn't, strangely enough, No, And
Speaker 1: he died first. He died first. And he died in
Speaker 1: the place. Yes, And he had been in the place
Speaker 1: for how long? Uh not that long, less than about
Speaker 1: half a year. He died in the room with her. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I say this in the book. It was this is
Speaker 1: not a typical. He was in hospice and my mother
Speaker 1: left the room briefly she left to use the bathroom
Speaker 1: for like two minutes maybe less, and that's when he passed.
Speaker 1: Isn't interesting because I'm a firm believer that not with
Speaker 1: all people, but some people they have that kind of
Speaker 1: mastery and they're like, I don't want to die in
Speaker 1: front of you. I think that is exactly what happened,
Speaker 1: and that's what the hospice lady said. She found out
Speaker 1: about that. Oh, she was sort of shock. I mean
Speaker 1: she was just, uh, I can't you know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to even imagine they've been married for married in thirty
Speaker 1: eight it was two thousand seven, I don't know years,
Speaker 1: sixty nine years. Yeah, I mean it was just an
Speaker 1: insane amount of time that they've been together. And they
Speaker 1: were together before that, and they were each other's only
Speaker 1: they were like, yeah, they were like one person. Did
Speaker 1: she last after that almost two years? Did she change
Speaker 1: in her demeanor towards you once? Once she were her
Speaker 1: only blood? Kin? I know it was I think maybe
Speaker 1: she was trying to protect me sometimes, that maybe she
Speaker 1: thought real, her real emotions would be too much for
Speaker 1: me to handle, and that it was just easier to
Speaker 1: kind of well, you have the father who had crazy mommy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if I can be so glib about this, and
Speaker 1: I mean very often the woman like your mom, who's
Speaker 1: as strident as leathery as they are, there's some hurt
Speaker 1: that they're protecting what happened with her to the extent
Speaker 1: you can say she has an unhappy childhood. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean she never told me that she did if
Speaker 1: she didn't ever explored that, and she did not want
Speaker 1: to talk too much about that. I mean she would
Speaker 1: tell me these fixed anecdotes about the past and parents.
Speaker 1: To her father was he did a lot of things,
Speaker 1: but one thing that he mostly did was he's a
Speaker 1: pressor in the garment district. But before that he had
Speaker 1: had an ice cream cone factory for a little while, um,
Speaker 1: which she swept out. She wanted to be a ballerina
Speaker 1: at one point, but she was not graceful, uh or
Speaker 1: tall enough for anything, but she was saving up for
Speaker 1: ballet shoes. She told me that one. Um. I think
Speaker 1: he did some other things. He operated a movie theater
Speaker 1: for a while, like as a projectionist and um, but
Speaker 1: most yeah, I think he was he was he took
Speaker 1: tickets on a trolley car. But the main thing he
Speaker 1: did was he was a pressor in the garment district
Speaker 1: and he had five children. His wife, my grandmother, raised
Speaker 1: the children and they had no money. Do you think that, um,
Speaker 1: do you think that your perspective which has this wonderful, wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful neurosis in it. And I said, like, Woody Allen,
Speaker 1: where you're expressing things? We all you're you're just doing
Speaker 1: it in a in a funnier, you know, you and
Speaker 1: he in a funnier kind of more interesting way. Do
Speaker 1: you think you owe that to your mom? Probably to
Speaker 1: both of them in some way. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: my parents were extraordinary people in sweet and sour in combination.
Speaker 1: In your work, do you get the sweet from your
Speaker 1: dad and the sour from your mom? I think both
Speaker 1: and both, I think and from both of them. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: What's your next book going to be? About? Things? Stories
Speaker 1: and people, pictures and trying to cope? I'll talk about
Speaker 1: it and then I'll like completely drinks it so understand.
Speaker 1: Probably possibly about the New York and that's all I'm
Speaker 1: going to say. What about writing about yourself and your
Speaker 1: marriage and your you and your husband or worry we
Speaker 1: don't we got to stop and shot. We went to
Speaker 1: Stop and Shop last night to read, and we went
Speaker 1: to Stop and shopping. You miss living in New York
Speaker 1: at all. I missed New York all due time. I
Speaker 1: miss it. So wherever you I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: it on the air, but you live outside the city
Speaker 1: for many, many years, many years, describe what it's like.
Speaker 1: They're it's very pretty, it's very clean. Air is christ
Speaker 1: The air is crisp, and women a freshly worked out
Speaker 1: and they have got a Yeah, to some extent, it's
Speaker 1: people seem if they have you know, you don't see
Speaker 1: too many people like yaking to themselves on the street
Speaker 1: unless they're talking through their phone. It's it's great, But
Speaker 1: I really do miss the city. I don't really like
Speaker 1: to drive, I don't really like how kids are grown. Yes,
Speaker 1: so why don't you and your husband moved back to
Speaker 1: the city because he likes living out there? He does,
Speaker 1: he does. He in the same boat I want to
Speaker 1: move out of the city. And my wife was like,
Speaker 1: you know, she's singing West Side Story every night. She
Speaker 1: just can't imagine leaving New York. Yeah, well, without kids,
Speaker 1: I mean we would not have left the city. But
Speaker 1: with kids it was just impossible, and we can't talk
Speaker 1: Bill into moving back. No, no, no, he really likes
Speaker 1: it out there. He likes having a bird feeder, likes
Speaker 1: that we have. I like having a bird feeder. That's
Speaker 1: the one positive thing. We do. Have a bird feeder.
Speaker 1: You have and you have two birds, and I have
Speaker 1: two birds. I have a kayak and I have an
Speaker 1: African gray who talks, and I love birds. I'm a
Speaker 1: bird nut. Do you mind my asking what the bird says?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Well she says a lot of things. Um,
Speaker 1: she says good morning, she says good night, she says,
Speaker 1: want want waffle? Can you still teach the bird to
Speaker 1: do things? Yes, yes, she's very neurotic. She plucks. She
Speaker 1: she's she's an African gray. She's very very sweet. They're
Speaker 1: notoriously neurotic. She plucks her feathers, and she does say
Speaker 1: she does say don't pluck, and then she keeps plucking.
Speaker 1: But the thing I was going to tell you is
Speaker 1: that when people come into the house, she might be
Speaker 1: on her feeding stand, she'll get afraid, she'll fly to
Speaker 1: the floor. And I always say it's okay, it's okay,
Speaker 1: it's okay. So she taught herself that. Now, if she's
Speaker 1: on her feeding stand and like some like a plumber
Speaker 1: comes by, he's got like tools off his belt and
Speaker 1: buckets and you know, strange shape, grange shapes like I
Speaker 1: always think of them as man. My dog does this
Speaker 1: when they see homeless people with like a shopping card
Speaker 1: with plastic bottles, strange shape and like too many things
Speaker 1: on the belt and the buckets. And she'll fly and
Speaker 1: clanging sounds. She'll fly to the floor. She'll sort of
Speaker 1: pace around, and she'll go, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay,
Speaker 1: And and it is incredible, she soothes herself. It's so great.
Speaker 1: So I needed to tell her, I want to I'm
Speaker 1: going to get a bird. Now. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of work, I'm telling you, but there's there's so great.
Speaker 1: There's so great. I'll go to any lengths to be loved. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. And I want to have I
Speaker 1: want to have a I want to have a bird.
Speaker 1: And I want the bird to say to me, it's okay,
Speaker 1: it's okay, it's okay. She says, it's herself. Any more
Speaker 1: than that, and that to my list of a good
Speaker 1: reading lamp, A fireplace, a cup of coffee, and a
Speaker 1: gray African one African gray and African gray, and should
Speaker 1: name what's your bird's name? Eli? My son named her.
Speaker 1: She We thought she was a boy. And you can't
Speaker 1: it's I forget what the word is, but like there's
Speaker 1: you can't tell from the outside. They have to have
Speaker 1: a blood test, so the vet did a blood test.
Speaker 1: They have they have no externals as it were nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: blood blood test just get lost in the mail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it was Elia. And the other one is a
Speaker 1: kayik and she's not very name Jackie Jack. And she's
Speaker 1: not very smart. She's not very smart, but she's so
Speaker 1: adorable and she's really pretty. So you know who needs
Speaker 1: when you're like that pretty, you don't have to be that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get a bird. Let me think about it.
Speaker 1: But if I had a bird, I would name it ros.
Speaker 1: I would name it Rose. You can see ross chests
Speaker 1: cartoons in the pages of The New Yorker magazine and
Speaker 1: on her website ras chest dot com. To see a
Speaker 1: picture of Oz and her bird, Jackie, go to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing dot org, where you can also see Roz's
Speaker 1: cartoon of this very interview. Oh This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: you're listening to. Here's the thing.