riyl / Boing Boing

Brian Heater / 8:30 am Fri, Apr 18, 2014

RiYL podcast 049: Cartoonist Bob Fingerman

Recommended if You Like is Boing Boing's weekly podcast of Brian Heater's cafe conversations with musicians, cartoonists, writers, and other creative types.

In April of last year, Image Comics published Maximum Minimum Wage, a hardcover compilation of Bob Fingereman’s long-running Fantagraphics series. To this day, Minimum Wage and the subsequent collection Beg The Question remain the cartoonist’s best known work, telling the close-to-home tale of an artist struggling with work, love and life in New York in the 90s. After a 15-year hiatus spent on various comics projects and a trio of prose novels, Fingerman picked up the story again in January with a new series bearing the same name, set three years after the end of its predecessor. I met up with Fingerman in the Manhattan apartment he shares with his wife to discuss returning to a project after nearly a decade and a half and how to get back into the mindset of younger, poorer time.

RiYL: RSS |

Brian Heater / 6:30 pm Wed, Apr 16, 2014

RiYL podcast 048: 3D Systems CEO Avi Reichental

Recommended if You Like is Boing Boing's weekly podcast of Brian Heater's cafe conversations with musicians, cartoonists, writers, and other creative types.

When 3D Systems CEO Avi Reichental swung by New York to address the Inside 3D Printing conference in Manhattan, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to discuss the technology. The company has been at the forefront of the space since 1986, when co-founder Chuck Hull invented the process of stereolithography, which gave rise to the world of industrial additive manufacturing. The company’s been a player on the business side since then and has also spent the last several years developing a consumer facing arm for the quickly growing world of desktop 3D printing. We covered the viability of consumer technology, the on-going patent wars, and the recent controversies surrounding 3D printed weapons.

RiYL: RSS |

Brian Heater / 10:59 am Wed, Apr 2, 2014

RiYL podcast 047: cartoonist Box Brown, "Andre the Giant: Life and Legend"

Recommended if You Like is Boing Boing's weekly podcast of Brian Heater's cafe conversations with musicians, cartoonists, writers, and other creative types.

In this episode, we speak with Box Brown, the artist behind the newly-released graphic novel Andre the Giant: Life and Legend. By way of background, he also designed RiYL’s logo, so in a sense he’s been part of the podcast since the beginning. I’ve been aware of his work since the earliest days, when he first began exploring the medium. He posted his loosely autobiographical comics on message boards of established cartoonists like James Kochalka. He put his work out on floppies and webcomics. Those early strips were really rough.

I can’t think of a single cartoonist whose work I’ve watched progress from such an early stage. And it was no doubt that exact drive to put his stuff out in the world that helped Brown improve, culminating with the forthcoming release of his first full-length book, Andre the Giant: Life and Legend, which examines the man who became professional wrestling’s largest legends.

Brown and I met up at a coffee shop next door to Locust Moon, my favorite comic shop in Philadelphia. We discussed giving it all up to pursue your dream — and, like zine publisher (and friend of Brown) Robert Newsome before him, the cartoonist was more than happy to discuss his lifelong love of professional wrestling with a podcast host who’s only just beginning to familiarize himself with the subject.

Oh, and as we approach episode 50, I’m asking listeners to let me know which RiYL episodes have been their favorite, thus far. Read the rest

Brian Heater / 1:30 pm Wed, Mar 26, 2014

RiYL podcast 046: baseball statistics geek Ben Lindbergh

Recommended if You Like is Boing Boing's weekly podcast of Brian Heater's cafe conversations with musicians, cartoonists, writers, and other creative types.

My knowledge of sabermetrics is elementary, at best. I know that it’s utterly transformed baseball analysis and helped get a lot of plush clubhouse jobs for an army of number crunching math geeks. I know that it involves a close examination of traditionally undervalued statistics like on-base percentage and foul balls. I know it’s caused writers and managers to rethink the amount of emphasis put on traditionally overvalued indicators like batting averages and strikeouts. Ben Lindbergh, editor in chief of leading sabermetrics site Baseball Prospectus joined me in a Manhattan cafe blaring the hits of the 90s to discuss how a group of statistic geeks have transformed our national pastime.

RiYL: RSS |

Brian Heater / 1:30 pm Fri, Mar 21, 2014

RiYL podcast 044: Molly Crabapple

Recommended if You Like is Boing Boing's weekly podcast of Brian Heater's cafe conversations with musicians, cartoonists, writers, and other creative types.

I speak with artist Molly Crabapple about her art exhibitions, murals, illustrations, and an increasing interest in social justice, which recently led Rolling Stone to call her “Occupy’s greatest artist.” It’s a fascination that has taken her around the world, to unexpected locations like the courtrooms of Guantanamo Bay.

This episode is brought to you by Hover, the best way to buy and manage domain names. Get a 10% discount when you go to Hover and use the code SNOOPY

RiYL: RSS |

Brian Heater / 7:45 am Mon, Mar 17, 2014

RiYL podcast 044: music booker and Israeli baseball player Shlomo Lipetz

Recommended if You Like is Boing Boing's weekly podcast of Brian Heater's cafe conversations with musicians, cartoonists, writers, and other creative types.

I met Shlomo last week at New York's City Winery, just before settling into another RiYL interview. The 6'4 mustachioed Israeli was making sure everything was all right with the the Old 97s' Rhett Miller, ahead of his show that night. Fascinated by meeting my first real life Shlomo (surprising, perhaps, given my own ethnic makeup), I Googled the venue's booker the following day, stumbling upon a Wall Street Journal story from 2012 about Israeli baseball -- a subject which I, admittedly, know nothing about. At the top was an image of the booker, full-beard, in a pre-pitch lineup. Down below, the paper described Lipetz as, "Israel's biggest baseball star." A day later, we sat down during a Bob Mould soundcheck to discuss how one earns such a title. Lipetz is characteristically modest, pointing out that he's the best at something in a country that seemingly barely knows it exists. According to the Journal story, some 1,000 of Israel's population of eight million play the sport. Still, how many of us can say we're the best at anything?

This episode is brought to you by Hover, the best way to buy and manage domain names. Get a 10% discount when you go to Hover and use the code SNOOPY

RiYL: RSS |