WBEZ | Claire Zulkey

The Stephen Rodrick interview

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:40:00 -0500

Stephen Rodrick's "The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey Into His Magical Life," explores the life of his father, a Navy pilot who died when his plane crashed into the ocean, through the lens of current members of his dad's former squadron as he traveled with them on their aircraft carrier. You may also know him as the New York Times author of "Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie," the fascinating look at...well, you can figure it out. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a contributing editor for Men's Journal and his work has been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Crime Writing and The Best American Political Writing. He has also written for New York, Rolling Stone, GQ, and The New Republic. Chicagoans, you can watch him speak Thursday at Northwestern and later at the Boarding House, so check him out.

I know a lot of people in the book opted not to read it until it came out, but how much did you feel compelled to alert about what you would publishing about them?
Not as many as you'd think. Most of my family members and the guys in the Navy said "Write what you see." That was incredibly freeing. The only person who got a pre-read was my Mom and we worked out her problems with it, that wasn't easy, but we got through it.

Why now?
My dad's plane, the EA-6B Prowler was finally being retired. It was my Dad's plane. If I was going to follow his old plane with his final squadron it had to be now. So that was a great motivator.

In an interview with the Awl you discuss your initial efforts to sell the story, which were unsuccessful. As a magazine writer I imagine you have a lot of experience pitching stories: what’s the difference when it’s your own life, both in terms of the pitch and how you feel if it gets passed on?
Actually, I wasn't unsuccessful. I sent in my proposal, my agent slapped a cover page on it and we had an auction a few days later. The editor I mentioned passed on it, but there were other offers on the table thank goodness. We sent it out to probably seven or eight places, some passed, some didn't. The different in pitching this versus a magazine piece is I knew what I wanted to do and was prepared to take less money from a place that would let me tell the story as I wanted it to be written. That isn't always possible in magazines.

What are some of the biggest real-life cliches about living on an aircraft carrier?
The noise. You can not imagine how loud the flight deck is. You can not imagine how a catapult launch will nearly shake you out of your bunk. There is noise everywhere and all the time.

What’s one (or two or three) things you wished you had packed for carrier life that you hadn’t?
I wished I'd packed ear plugs and more clothes. Trying to do laundry on a boat with 5,000 men and women was a real "Lord of the Flies" experience.

In that Awl interview you talk about the parallels between being a military kid and the transience of a magazine writer’s life. For someone considering doing what you do, what tips do you have for making it easier to pick up and move quickly to a new story and location?
An understanding spouse. If you don't have a partner who is independent enough to survive when you're gone 10 weeks of the year, it's going to be tough. And try to park yourself in a place where stories are happening all around. If you're in Chicago, stay in Chicago. Plenty of great stories here.

I’m curious how you pitched the Lindsay Lohan story to your editor at the Times, because while it was a story about Lindsay Lohan and what a mess she is, obviously it was much more than that.

It was really simple: Lindsay Lohan. Bret Easton Ellis. Paul Schrader. The porn star next door. Complete access. That story was green-lighted in about ten minutes. That is the exact opposite of most pitches and it was because I knew Schrader a little and I emailed him directly and didn't have to go through a squadron of publicists. Lohan's people balked, but Schrader insisted to his everlasting credit.

How much do you hold on to grudges when it comes to stories you’ve pitched and believed in, that got killed? Are there any that you still lament didn’t see the light of day?
I try not to bear grudges, but there is a certain pain when you see your idea at another magazine simply because you couldn't convince your editor of the idea. It doesn't get easier as you get old. I did a story on Wilmette native Julia Allison who was basically internet famous for no real reason. It got killed by New York and I place it elsewhere. I think it's one of my best profiles and it's a bummer it didn't reach a larger audience

Which athletes, either who you’ve profiled or you’ve just followed as a fan, do you think have established some of the best post-athletic-career lives and careers?

That's a good question. Many of the players I written about—Brett Favre, Riddick Bowe, Dennis Rodman—has struggled mightily in retirement. Grant Hill is retiring this year. I suspect he will do great things

What are some of your favorite pieces of creative nonfiction?

Updike's "Hub Fans Bid The Kid Adieu." Anything by Julian Barnes. The flying stuff by James Salter is the best.

How does it feel to be the 350th person interviewed for Zulkey.com/WBEZ?
Grateful and unworthy.

Follow Claire Zulkey @Zulkey You can find previous Zulkey.com interviews here.

List: Questions that get all women horny

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:58:00 -0500

This list was inspired by a spam email I keep getting titled "Three questions that make every women horny," so in case you’re my dad or someone like him, I don’t even know what the word "horny" means, OK?

I put all the dishes away, is that OK?

You mean to tell me that you are actually 13 years older than you appear? Is it possible that I could even be more attracted to you than I was initially?

Do you mind if I just take care of the laundry? There is a certain way that I like to do it.

Will it bother you if I scratch your head for a while?

Don’t you think you need a new pair of boots to really pull that outfit together?

That dinner was so delicious, will you please make it for me again? Scratch that. Will you share the recipe with me and I’ll just make it myself in the near future, with possible riffs and improvements?

How can it be that you’ve said something so insightful when you just said something even more witty before that and are likely to blow my mind again momentarily?

Do all female celebrities know how inferior they are to you?

Did you recently lose weight and/or gain muscle?

Follow Claire Zulkey @Zulkey

The Cheryl Raye Stout Interview: A chat with one of Chicago's veteran sports reporters

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:52:00 -0500

As a veteran female sports reporter, Cheryl Raye Stout has had to prove her chops over the nearly 30 years she’s been reporting in this city. We had a delightful phone conversation about breaking through the glass ceiling (which took the form of the Bears locker room door), her rapport with some of the city's sports legends and her thoughts on head injuries. Go here if you’d like to learn a little bit more about her history as a Chicagoan and reporter. We spoke for much longer than your typical blog post, so if you'd like to see the full chat, go here.

You teach radio sportscasting at Columbia College. What do you have to teach students now about reporting that wasn’t relevant 10 years ago?
I also taught ethics in broadcasting. I had to bring that into play because a lot of times they take blogs verbatim, they take Tweets verbatim, Facebook... I said, 'Whoah! Unless it’s a legitimate source, you can’t take it at face value.' One of the things I tell my students too is if you’re using Twitter or Facebook, you’ve got to be very careful. I think players, strangely, think that Twitter is almost personal and private. They don’t realize the ramifications when they put things out there. I think there are more pros than cons but there are cons and the negativity—like what I’ve seen this year, about Derrick Rose, that really, really is bothersome.

I saw a post on Deadspin about how little anyone knows about the kind of injury Rose has, yet everyone feels so qualified to say he’s slacking.
I find that just appalling. Because those of us around him—I know the kid, I’ve been around him—we know that he’s not the person that they’re painting him out to be. And it’s hard because people will attack you for saying anything about him positively. Sports talk radio has really become a beast of negativity and of vile spewing things.

You alluded to some unpleasant situations you encountered when you first started covering sports in Chicago. Can you give an example or two?
I’ve told the story about the Bears, when I was going up there for practices, the players would be really angry and say, insult me and be mean-spirited, and then they had to sit outside the locker room. But there’s been times when I was in a Boston Celtics locker room early in my career and they never had any women covering at that time. I was there in the visiting locker room at the stadium and a player saw me and he’s coming out of the shower, dancing and everything, naked. I’d never make eye contact, I’d walk away. I thought, 'What a jerk.' So, he was dressed and I walked past him and said, 'You know, there really isn’t much to look at.' I just felt that humor was my way of getting back without being mean, and to indicate that I’m not going to back down just because you don’t want me in here.

How do you advise female sports reporters on how not to be pushed around, prove they are going to stick around and can roll with the punches?
You have to know more. You have to research more. You cannot rest. I also tell them, especially when you do a lot of phone calling or contacting, you make sure you know who is on the other end of the phone. If it’s a wife or girlfriend, or whoever, you treat them well. I always tell everybody, men and women but women particularly, if you're going to interview a player, don’t just gung-ho start the interview. Introduce yourself, talk to them a little bit, and then say, 'Can I talk to you now on the record?' Just to break that ice because you then get comfortable.

The seasons when you had to sit outside the Bears locker room before Jim Harbaugh invited you in, what did you do while you sat there?
I would sit there and ask the PR director to get me a player, the player would come out and I’d talk to them. The funniest thing was when I was sitting there one day and Walter Payton sat down next to me. This was before I was let in. He goes, 'Go Cheryl, go in there!' I said, 'No. I know you, you’ll open the door, I’ll walk in and you’ll walk the other way.' He was a practical joker. I just knew that I had to bide my time.

What are some of your proudest moments as a reporter?
One of the things I learned a long time ago is that everybody you meet—if it’s a security guard, an usher, a handler, a PR person—no matter what, you introduce yourself, you get to know them. That’s the way I was raised. Michael Jordan used to talk to us before games in the locker room. He was very accommodating. A lot of it was background information, and sometimes it was on the record when you were doing an interview for news. But he talked to me about baseball and he said, 'That’s the sport I wanted to play.' I said, 'Oh Michael, you’ve got years.' This was almost a year and a half before he retired. Michael retires and somebody I knew that was involved with both the White Sox and the Bulls came up to me at a Bulls game and said, 'Michael’s going to try out for the White Sox.' I called up a person I knew that was doing security with the White Sox. I said 'Hey, what time does Michael get there to work out?' And the person says, 'Oh, about 10 o’clock.' And she goes, 'You...didn’t know that, did you?' I said, 'Don’t worry, I’ll never use your name. I just need to make sure I’m on the right trail.' As I progressed I was able to get the information and it was a firestorm when I did it.

I watched that 30 For 30 about him playing baseball: I never before heard that conspiracy theory that he was being forced to take time off from basketball because of his gambling.
His dad had been murdered. That’s what people forget. And in '93, James Jordan traveled with Michael. That was the first year he had ever traveled with him. I was working for the team’s flagship station and I traveled with him. They were closer than father and son. When James was murdered, there were over 100 cameras on Michael’s lawn. That’s when his privacy was really unearthed. I think that that devastated him more than anything. So to say that it was from gambling... unless you know for a fact, I just don’t like that conjecture.

Has anything you've learned from your career influenced the way you raised your son?
I made a clear decision that he will do sports for enjoyment, he will not do sports to make that a career. I suppose you could mold anybody into an athlete if you really really try. I just think that the way it’s evolved now—where the parents are living through their children, and these kids are playing sports 24/7, I don’t think they become well-rounded. Also I saw the injuries. When I was covering Bears camp up at Platteville, the old place, we used to be feet away from injuries. I saw the collisions that went on, I heard knees and shoulders pop, I saw these guys with their bell rung. I had talked to a couple of Bears coaches, Dave Wannstedt and Dick Jauron. They had daughters. I said 'If you had a son, would you let them play football?' They both said no. I was in a very bad car accident when I was 19 and I had a concussion that was really bad. I had the effects for over a year. I now have a brain ailment. We don’t know if it’s connected but I wonder if it is.

Can you tell me more about your brain ailment?
Five years ago I started having some symptoms with my eyes. I had trouble. I kept blinking a lot. My jaw was dropping. It took over a year to be diagnosed. I was going from different types of doctors until I finally went to a neurologist who said, 'You have Meige’s syndrome.' I get Botox shots every three months to control it. It’s my eyes, my throat, my neck, down the blade of my shoulders. I deal with pain every day and sometimes it affects my voice and affects certain things. I don’t want that to impede me from doing what I do what I want to do. I’m not going to sit here and feel sorry for myself. I just deal with those times when I’m working and I can feel the symptoms bother me. It just frustrates me more than anything.

Who are the nicest Chicago athletes that you’ve gotten to know over the years?
Boy, there’s so many. I love Ozzie Guillen. I don’t care if he’s a lightning rod. I knew him from the time he was a rookie. I’ll never forget he was doing a live shot with us on WMAQ and he didn’t speak good English. The only language he knew was profanity.

This is my favorite Bulls team, this last few years. The core of Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng. My son was given jerseys by other people, but the only one I ever bought for him was Luol Deng’s, because of him as a person. He is the most well-rounded, grounded, intelligent, caring athlete I’ve ever been around. Michael Jordan and I had a great rapport. I really loved him. I could go on and on.

How does it feel to be the 349th person interviewed for Zulkey.com/WBEZ?
I feel honored!

Follow me @Zulkey and go here to see previous Zulkey.com interviews.

Questions for the woman jogging with a party-hat-wearing dog

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:13:00 -0500

Was is the dog's birthday or was this commemorating another occasion?

How did you manage to keep the dog's hat on its head?

How could you just keep running without looking around to enjoy everyone's reaction, as if it was not a big deal?

Follow Claire Zulkey @Zulkey

List: Best items from the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:08:00 -0500

Those cool kids at University of Chicago take part in an epic scavenger hunt each year, so legendary that Patricia Marx immortalized it in the New Yorker last year. This year's hunt ended Sunday. Here were my favorite items from the full list:

2. Jump the shark. Literally. Points based on length and vivacity of shark. [Up to 40 points]

11. Official swag from Arthur Andersen LLP, Lehman Brothers Inc., or Enron Corporation. [9 points]

14. Reanimate a dead invertebrate using nothing more than edible, common kitchen ingredients. [6 points]

20. Get an animal at the zoo to wave at you. [14 points]

24. Every girl needs a cocktail dress! Yours should hold at least a liter of Mai Tais. Keep it classy, though—we expect neither VPL nor VLP (visible liquid placement). [33.814 points]

27. It’s not about the money; we just find zeroes deeply and inexplicably appealing. Bring us the highest denomination banknote you can find in whatever currency you want. [4 points per zero in excess of three]

29. A team member who was born in a country that no longer exists, with documentation. [10 points]

33. The Library of Congress classification system has been criticized time and time again for not being sufficiently onomatopoeic. Prove the haters wrong: find a book from one of the University of Chicago libraries whose call number, including at least one digit, abstractly reflects its content. [9 points]

100. Accompany a campus tour group! Every time the tour guide talks, play the saddest backing song you
can on a single violin. [7 points]

104. Has this ever happened to you? No. But it could. Create a one-minute montage of ten plausible informercial-calibre disasters. [6 points]

206. During the Hunt, get a member of your team into one of the costumed, on-field competitions held between innings at a professional baseball game. [20 points for minor league. 20 more points for MLB]

243. An official sign that still proclaims Richard Daley Mayor of Chicago. [3 points for M. Daley; 10 points for J. Daley]

246. A bodybag. [25 R.I.Points]

261. Very few people know that May 10th is Bring Your Mariachi Band to Work Day. We have a feeling that this year, a lot of people are going to find out. [10 points]

262. A tiny fiddler crab. Must possess tiny fiddle.[6 points]

267. The TacoCopterTM: The remote-controlled helicopter that can deliver a taco wherever you want it, whenever you want it. Which, incidentally, would be to one of your professors during a class on Friday. [15 points]

297. Any government form inquiring about the facial hair style of the person (male and female) filling it out. [4 points]

298. An edible cookbook. Must contain at least three recipes, each printed on a page that tastes like the recipe’s product. Cookbooks should include mouthwatering illustrations. [24 points]

304. An anti-gravity cat. [2 points]

309. Keep spirits high at Scav Olympics by transforming one of your team members into Cleatus the FOX Sports Robot. Like Cleatus, your Sports Robot should know a variety of football-esque dances, play a mean air guitar, and always follow the First Law of Sports Robotics: A Sports Robot may not bum out a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being not to be pumped. [11 points]

311. Bring to campus: Peter Francis Geraci, Celozzi and Ettleson, Carm Scarpace, or Bob Rohrmann in full regalia. We’d also love to see the spokesmeats for Moo & Oink, or Eagle Man, his wife, or child. [9 points and 11 points respectively]

Follow Claire Zulkey @Zulkey

The Jon Ronson interview

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:01:00 -0500

Jon Ronson is one of those writers who embodies what creative nonfiction is all about by demonstrating just how strange and wonderful the world can be. A Welsh journalist, documentary filmmaker, radio presenter and nonfiction author, his books include Them: Adventures With Extremists, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry and most recently Lost At Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries. His book The Men Who Stare At Goats was turned into a movie starring George Clooney. You can learn a lot more about him here.

I saw that you have a standing reply on your website that you will not investigate people’s claims that they are victims of mind control. Aside from that, what personal information do your readers tend to volunteer to you most frequently?

That they are married to psychopaths. Or that they're worried they may be psychopaths. There is an adage in psychology that if you're worried you may be a psychopath that means you aren't one. Because psychopaths never worry about being psychopaths. They're FINE with it. Which makes me suspect that psychopathy is the most pleasant feeling of all the mental disorders.

Isn't it interesting that so many people share the exact same delusion - that they're being mind controlled by the CIA. When our brains go wrong they go wrong in uncannily similar ways. It shows that we aren't all individual snowflakes. My guess is that some of the people who believe they're mind control victims actually suffer from a rare disorder called Delusional Disorder. The symptoms include 'non-bizarre' delusions. That delusion is non-bizarre because some people over the years HAVE actually been mind controlled by the CIA.

Of the different cultures you’ve written about, what have been some that seemed most tempting to join up with, even if just in theory?

I had a good time writing the story Running Through Cornfields for my first book, Them, about Rachel Weaver, one of the survivors of Ruby Ridge. But that's just because I liked Idaho and Montana. The rivers and mountains. But I guess that's not a great reason to become a white separatist. Anyway, they'd never have me.

How can you tell which media are right for which subjects (what works well for radio, web, books, etc?)

Sometimes it's just whoever is interested in having me work with them at any particular time. I go in and out of favor with different people. For instance, British nonfiction TV has no interest in me at the moment. Sometimes the subject matter dictates it. I once made a documentary about the band The Shaggs that I knew had to be for the radio. There was no way I could do that story without getting to play their music. Here it is:

But the thing I'm always looking for is an adventure that might become a book. Whenever I do a documentary or a feature I'm always wondering if it could be a rabbit hole that takes me to a book.

I remember asking Christiane Kubrick - when I was making my film Stanley Kubrick's Boxes - what her husband was looking for during those ever lengthening gaps between films. She said, "The magical moment of falling in love with a story." I know that feeling well. Whenever I start a story I look for that magical moment of falling in love with it enough that it may become a book.

Who are some of your "favorite" criminals ("favorite" of course meaning compelling, not as in you’d want to move in with them).

I loved my adventures with David Icke and Alex Jones in Them, infiltrating Bohemian Grove with Alex. Not sure he counts as a criminal. Tony in The Psychopath Test. I liked him personally, and also he was mysterious. He claimed to have faked madness to escape a prison sentence and now he was stuck in a hospital for the criminally insane and nobody believed he was sane. I loved trying to work out if he was insane or not. It opened up such an interesting area about how we view and judge other people, how we read between lines, how morally corrosive it can be.

If you had to teach a ten-minute course on interviewing, what advice would you be sure to impart upon your students?

This could be terrible advice, but don't plan any questions in advance. That way you have to listen. You have to be a twig in the tidal wave of the conversation. But not preparing any questions doesn't mean don't do research. Do lots of research, just assimilate it, rather than plan and structure the interview. As I say, that might be the worst advice.

You immerse yourself so fully in the stories you write. What have been some scenarios where you were conducting research or interviews and then found yourself in a potentially unsafe environment?

The most recent time was writing The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones, which is in my new collection, Lost At Sea. He's the real life superhero I was patrolling with in Seattle. He took me to Belltown to break up a gang of armed crack dealers. They were, "What the f*ck are you doing coming here in your costumes? This is not fun and games to us. If you don't get off our block we're going to shoot you." And Phoenix said, "We're staying."

What are you reading right now?

Nothing. I'm watching Freaks and Geeks on Netflix. I think it's just about the best thing I ever saw. It breaks my heart that they only made one series. It makes me feel so helpless that I can't go back in time and fix it so they made more. It's like finding out someone died. Although I did notice one or two jumping the shark moments in the last episode or two - like James Franco liking Dungeons and Dragons. So maybe it was for the best that it died young and left a good looking corpse.

Do you stay in touch with anyone you write about?

I would like to stay in touch with everyone. I consider it a real honor and compliment if people want to stay in touch with me after I've written about them. Even if we massively disagree with each other politically, I always think we've been thought something intimate together when we've had some kind of encounter or adventure. They feel like family members.

What have been some of your most recent obsessions, even if they were only fleeting? (I for instance spent part of today googling Aleister Crowley and his ilk.)

Ha. Last few days I've looked at the disappearance of Maura Murray, workplace bullying and Amanda Palmer.

What’s a potential story topic you figured would be rich for material but turned out to be relatively banal, and then another where you stumbled upon a wormhole in an unexpected place?

The saddest example of a story that went nowhere was the months trying to write a book about the credit card industry. This was before the crash. I realized was that all these people who work in the credit industry – the list brokers, all these people who’ve got these devious tricks to keep us ensnared – are really important. But they are also incredibly boring. They couldn't light up the page for me. So I abandoned the book. And instead I went to Alaska to write my story Santa's Little Conspirators, that ended up in Lost at Sea, my new collection. That was about shenanigans in a Christmas theme town.

The opposite - a story I wasn't into but turned out to be extraordinary - was going to Hawaii to interview a soldier called Glenn Wheaton. He had been part of the US Military's remote viewing program. The psychic spies. I really didn't have any interest in them. The writer Jim Schnabel had already written a very intricate book about them called Remote Viewers. I felt like I was telling a story that was already known. It was really miserable for me. While I was interviewing him we got talking about the 'other stuff' they were doing. He said they were trying to become invisible and kill goats just by staring at them. So the wormhole opened up. And I ended up writing The Men Who Stare At Goats.

Factchecking your work must be thrilling and exhausting. Which stories of yours were the most difficult to clear before publishing?

I don't remember ever having much of a problem. I'm pretty assiduous when I'm gathering the stories. So fact checking is usually fine.

How does it feel to be the 348th person interviewed for Zulkey.com/WBEZ?
It feels good!

A little something for mom

Thu, 09 May 2013 05:00:00 -0500

I was grateful for all the generosity that came my way after baby Paul was born: some gifts in particular were especially treasured. Food was appreciated because that was one more meal I wouldn’t have to cook.

Baby clothes were great because that prolonged the time until I’d actually have to buy my son his own outfits (I lack the gene that makes me want to spend hours in the children’s section. I find shopping for baby clothes almost as tedious as shopping for men’s clothes, which is just the most boring thing in the world.)

Target gift cards were like manna from heaven because they could be used to buy diapers, formula, coffee, wine, cereal--all the things we needed. One friend just wordlessly took the baby from me and changed his diaper, to save me a trip from getting off the couch.

All of it was amazing.

But one of the presents that most rocked my world was not related to the baby at all. It came from my friend Dave’s mom, who is one of those wonderful moms who is not my biological mother but whom I think of as being a little bit more than just “not my mom.”

The small package that arrived near the holidays was sent from Macy’s and was addressed to the baby, which wasn't that uncommon. I gave it to Steve to open, thinking that maybe it would be some sort of keepsake Christmas ornament. He read the card aloud, which said “Dear Paul: Please give this present to your mom.” So he handed me the small red be-ribboned gift box, which I opened to find a bottle of Chanel Coco Mademoiselle perfume.

I’m not exaggerating when I say it took me awhile to process this gift. Was it a mistake? Did Dave’s mom mean to send me something baby-related but Macy’s accidentally switched it with a bottle of perfume? Had I at some point talked about perfume with Dave’s mom, maybe complimented hers, and she sent me some after the fact? Why would she send me perfume? I didn’t need perfume. This was so weird.

A little while later, after taking the perfume out of its tissue paper again and trying it on, I realized that the impracticality of the gift was the essence of the gift. After the baby was born, I didn’t exactly feel like a million bucks. I had 30 pounds to lose, I was exhausted physically but getting four hours a sleep at night, and my body was awash in mind-crushing hormones. A pretty bottle of perfume in a pretty box was, obviously, meant for a totally different woman than me, a slender cosmopolitan gal who has fun places to be and great clothes to wear them to. Not fat jeans, a boob-compressing sports bra and a pair of Birkenstocks that smelled like cat pee.

Dave’s mom’s present (which I wear every day) was a reminder that someone out there knew that there was more to me and my life than the newborn baby, even if I had forgotten it. It was a treat, a luxurious, extravagant, girly treat that was only meant for me and not the baby or the husband or the house. The fact that it took me so long to realize what it was and what it meant was a sign that I really needed it, too.

I’ve written before that moms need reminders that they’re more than just moms, and part of this entails knowing moms who can help you remember that. I’m excited for my first Mothers Day and all (hooray for a 3 PM steak dinner!) and have always appreciated my own mother for the great job that she did raising me, but this year I’m also incredibly grateful for all the other mothers in my life who gave me support, sympathy, food, gift cards and fancy perfume. Even after all this time I’m still finding my way back to normal but I’d be a lot further away from the destination if it weren’t for them.

@Zulkey

Q&A with Julie Klausner, author of 'Art Girls Are Easy'

Mon, 06 May 2013 08:13:00 -0500

You probably know Julie Klausner from my 2010 interview with her. If not for that, maybe her memoir I Don't Care About Her Band or her personable podcast How Was Your Week. Starting Tuesday, you will also know her for her role as Young Adult author, as her new book Art Girls Are Easy, a funny and romantic summer camp romp with an artsy twist, will be released May 7. I asked Julie what it's like wearing a new YA hat, and below that, check out an excerpt from the book.

How hard or easy was it to switch gears into YA writing? What challenges did it pose?
It's completely tough to write a book, period. But switching gears into fiction was absolutely challenging, if only because I had to make sure I wasn't using my own voice the whole time when I was writing—whether it was in the description or in the dialogue. I don't have a lot of experience writing fiction. Part of that is because I have such a loud nonfiction voice. I am who I am. Another element of the challenge of having to sit down and make sh*t up is imagination. As I grow older, I become more and more fearful that I have little to no imagination. The kind of abilities I had as a little kid to just play and make things up as you went along. So, I had to get past that fear to crack the story, and then to write in the voices of the kids I invented. But as far as it being a challenge from a YA perspective, I honestly have to say that I just tried to be true to the material, and I didn't think of the audience as being below or necessarily less sophisticated than somebody I would usually write for. I didn't dumb down my prose—or, I tried not to.

You don't have to give us details (but feel free to), but how much of the book was inspired by your own young adulthood?
I absolutely relate to the main character in the book. I was a very emotionally intense adolescent, very interior. I was eaten alive by my own passions, which were equal parts artistic drive and sexual madness. That's where I drew the inspiration for Indigo's tumult. Her conflict is more internal than it is a concrete struggle with her best friend. She does have some love affair gone sour stuff with her best friend Lucy, but the main plot exists within Indigo, I think. As far as the setting, I did go to a Fine and Performing Arts sleepaway camp, but it wasn't like Silver Springs at all, insomuch as the counselors were NOT sleazy and I will go on record as saying nobody ever tried to make out with me at the time. Which is still disappointing.

What YA books have inspired you, either when you were a young adult or now in your general adulthood?
The first Gossip Girl novel, by Cecily Von Ziegesar, was a huge inspiration, in terms of when I was first researching the genre and my agent suggested I see what was out there. I was so impressed by its satire and humor and its references, as well as by its structure. It read like a television show in how it was laid out; each scene introduced a couple of characters and they all converged in the middle and at the end. I mean this as a huge compliment. So, that absolutely encouraged me to write one of my own. AS far as growing up, like everybody else I was shaped by Judy Blume's opus, but I also want to give a shout-out to Paula Danziger. She wrote some steamy—for me, at the time—novels about teenage girls making out with dudes and coming of age, and I plowed through every one of her novels. Also, if you Google her, you'll find some pretty incredible photos of her wearing a jaunty headband, which I guess, along with her purple glasses, was a trademark. She's dead now, which is very sad. A fellow redhead, too! Redhead Hall of Fame for her, no doubt.

What are your plans for celebrating your first YA book's release?
None as of yet! But I will probably overeat that night.

Who is currently your favorite animal? (Neither your nor my pets qualify.)
Well, that is unfair to disqualify Briscoe and Jimmy Jazz, but I'll play along. I'll go with most recently adored instead of utmost overall pet. Yesterday I met Marc Spitz's two basset hounds, Jerry and Joni. Jerry dazzled me, with his vocal displays of neediness and alpha-tude, but Joni ultimately won me over with her nuzzles and her plaintive, God-like eyes. I love them both. They are good hounds.

[Editor's note: Both Marc Spitz's and my dogs are named after Jerry Orbach.]

Now please enjoy an excerpt from Art Girls are Easy:

“Wake up!” Eleanor hissed. Sure enough, the bus was pulling up to campus, and the sign welcoming motorists to Silver Springs elicited cheers and general rabble from the peanut gallery of young campers at the front.
Indigo felt disoriented and groggy. She rubbed her eyes carefully so as not to smudge her mascara and looked out the window.They were just pulling up to the front of the camp.Indy could make out the lush lawn and blue buildings with sloping gray roofs in the near distance. Massive shady trees were spaced evenly throughout the campus, and the Silver Springs camp flag, which bore a feminized coat of arms that represented each discipline taught at camp above the Latin phrase ArsGratiaArtis (“Art is the reward of art”), danced lightly in the breeze. The overall effect was quite ethereal. Indigo began to imagine which colors she would mix to achieve the specific shades of the scene if she were to paint a landscape right now. Chartreuse and goldenrod. Maybe some cerulean.
“You were snoring.”Eleanor smirked, her thin lips a line graph of contempt under her Lancôme burgundy matte stick. “It was pretty annoying.”That was rich, coming from her. Indy gathered her things: she couldn’t wait to get off this bus and avoid Eleanor for the rest of the summer.
As the girls lined up like elegant, talented cattle down the bus aisle, the camp director, Lillian Meehan, greeted each camper as she exited with a lei made from organic peonies tied together with red kabbalah string. Lillian was tall and amiable, and thin enough to look great in clothes, though not necessarily pretty. Basically, she was Glenn Close with dark hair and a whistle around her neck.
Lucy looked back at a still-sleepy, rumpled Indigo before getting off the bus. As the two girls made eye contact for the first time since their light dish session about Tyler or Taylor or whoever, Lucy smiled and winked at her friend, and Indy felt the warm rush of camaraderie wash over her. She smiled back and soon enough emerged from the bus into the warm kiss of sunlight on the grassy patch, where Lillian greeted her with a lei. And when she lifted her face to take in the familiar postcard of the sprawling green campus before her, Indigo found something small and sublime in its composition.
There, on the lawn of the main sprawl of Silver Springs, right near the office, stood Nick Estep, holding a blowtorch to a life-size rectangular metal sculpture. Goggles rested over his longish hair, which trickled onto the collar of his Nirvana T-shirt in the Berkshires sunlight.Indigo’s heart rocketed to every point on the surface of her skin. He was here after all.

Follow Claire Zulkey @Zulkey.

Interview with 'Sexy Feminism' co-author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

Fri, 03 May 2013 08:54:00 -0500

I chat with a homegirl today, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs before moving to New York, where she spent a decade on staff at Entertainment Weekly, cofounded SexyFeminist.com, and now writes for several publications, including Women’s Health, Runner’s World, Writer’s Digest, Fast Company, and New York‘s Vulture. Jennifer Keishin Armstrong's history of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, is coming out on Tuesday, while her collaboration with Heather Wood Rudulph, Sexy Feminism, was released earlier this year. She has provided pop culture commentary for CNN, VH1, A&E, and ABC and teaches for Gotham Writers' Workshop. You can learn a lot more about her here.

I’m guilty of this myself but often, women criticize other women’s definitions of feminism. What were some criticisms you anticipated people lobbing towards Sexy Feminism that you wanted to head off at the pass and address within it?
We knew when we named our website Sexy Feminist (and then our book Sexy Feminism) that we were being a little, you know, provocative. But we knew it would start specific discussions, and we were right. Our thing is that we're definitely NOT delineating ourselves from other feminists somehow—you know, we're sexy feminists, and the others aren't—but we're saying that, despite continued misperception, ALL feminism is sexy. And we'll stop calling our website Sexy Feminist when everyone gets that. The idea is to stop people who have not necessarily identified as feminists but who are feminist-curious to look at the book or the site and want to learn more.

Tell me about the cover of the book: what were some other possibilities (if any) that were considered?
The only other possibility we got from the publisher was a very straightforward cover with no photos or graphics, which we thought was a little ... less than exciting, given the provocative name. This was the alternative we ended up with after sharing that feedback with them, and we felt okay about it. It's attention-grabbing, and that lipgloss is so fantastic that I ended up going out to hunt down anything I could find at Sephora that came close. (Hot tip: Tarte's lip crayon in "Enchanted" is my new favorite toy, and Tarte is one of our feminist-friendly cosmetic companies named in the book. Win win!)

What do you think are examples of pop culture that got feminism right both in terms of definition/idealism but also by demonstrating it in an everyday, practical way?
I feel a professional obligation to say this, but I also believe it: The Mary Tyler Moore Show. They weren't trying to be feminist, but the movement was so much in the air at the time, and they had so many feminist-identified women writing for the show, that it came through. I always say Mary Richards was the original Sexy Feminist. She really came into her empowerment throughout the series, and we saw her argue for equal pay to her male predecessor, we saw her talk about the pressures of being the only woman in the newsroom, and we saw her (mostly in later years) assert herself strongly with men. In one of the last episodes, she even asked Lou Grant out. It didn't work out, but still.

You’ve written books about The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the Mickey Mouse Club. What are some books about shows you’d read if they were written (but don’t want to write yourself?)
I love this question, because I can tell you that when figuring out my next book (which is now officially Seinfeld) I basically just pored over lists of TV shows. The ones I feel like I definitely can't tackle are sci-fi shows: I love some of them but don't have the geek-level knowledge required. So I think about stuff like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Lost. Those are the two that I think could hold up to book treatment, but I'm not necessarily the right author for them.

Tell me about what you do as a career coach/consultant. And what do you do when you feel like you need consulting?
I'm very good at running other people's lives! Actually, I have to admit I think I've had a pretty good run in my own career so far, and I really do like helping other people figure out how to make those key decisions that can make a difference. Most of the time, it's that people are simply frozen into inaction by fear—fear of failing, fear of succeeding. And writing, in particular, is such a baffling career path full of constant decisions. You don't just take the corporate job and then wait 50 years so you can get your gold watch. So I can talk to clients about everything from getting their first few publication credits to moving to the next level of publications to getting an agent or going freelance full-time. It's funny you ask about what I do when I need consulting, because I've just recently started feeling that itch, like, okay, what now? I've started looking for mentors to befriend so I can ask them for a little advice in exchange for a few rounds of drinks; I also went to a great conference last week run by ASJA, and got tons of ideas for ways to advance my career more.

What’s something really unfeminist that you like? (Sometimes I dance to really misogynistic music.)
Oh, man, I do love me some "In da Club" and "Big Pimpin.'" They're just good songs. I also happen to really enjoy watching The Bachelor/Bachelorette. I always say I will allow myself to watch them because I have studied media and feminism enough that I watch them with a (very) critical lens, and because I don't personally have a Nielsen box, so I'm not actually affecting the ratings. If I get a Nielsen box, it must stop immediately.

When you worked at Entertainment Weekly, which fanbases tended to respond most rabidly when you wrote about their favorite show/artist/movie etc?
Well, despite my claims that I couldn't write a whole Lost book, I did do some reporting on Lost in my day, and, you know, you can imagine that fan base. But more surprisingly, people get just as into their Grey's Anatomy, for instance. I used to recap that and couldn't ever read the message board comments. They were very, very passionate, and channeled that passion into being not-always-kind to me.

Who are some of your favorite sexy feminists in pop culture (and you cannot name either Tina Fey or Amy Poehler.)
Ha! Those ladies do rule, but I've been totally enamored of Lena Dunham of late. If you watch or read her interviews, man, that girl is scary smart. And a totally out-and-proud feminist. She takes the loads of criticism of her work quite beautifully, and I think her constant nakedness onscreen really is revolutionary the way she does it. We truly do need to see more body types besides 90 pounds and 5-foot-10 with Olympic-level abs. I also adore Mindy Kaling, and her show does a lot of subtly feminist things: Her character is great at her job and clearly smart, even though she's a little boy crazy and talks like a teenager. But more importantly, she has this insane sexual confidence that I think makes her a strangely wonderful role model to young women. Also, she's unbelievably funny, in her own way.

You’ve worked with Heather Wood for a long time (back when I interviewed you for MBToolBox about Sirens Mag.) Why do you two work so well together and what tips do you have for working with a longtime collaborator?
We definitely just have that mind-meld thing happening. We're each totally comfortable letting the other speak on our behalf as a team. I'm an independent spirit, but it's nice to have a collaborator to fall back on sometimes when your life gets crazy with book deadlines or personal stuff. It's the best when I log onto the site and see that she's posted new content or edited a piece I'd been neglecting. We can talk each other off professional ledges sometimes, too. The main thing is to treat it almost like a romantic relationship. Keep lines of communication open and constantly express appreciation. One of the things I've noticed we automatically do, and I like, is to always thank each other. If she sees that I put up a new post, she thanks me. If she does our taxes, I thank her. I've actually carried this over into my romantic relationship, and it works wonders!

How does it feel to be the 347th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
I feel really good about that number. There's something auspicious about it.

Follow Claire Zulkey @zulkey, check out previous interviews here or see her at Funny Ha-Ha tonight.

Chicago cubs are like a terrible girlfriend

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:45:00 -0500

The following three items are completely unrelated.

1.) I will be on the radio today on The Afternoon Shift to talk about my King Spa and alone time experiences at around 2 p.m., if you'd like to hear me.

2.) The Cubs' owners threatening to move the team if they don't get their way is the kind of bratty empty gesture that I hope they follow through on, just because it would be the most interesting thing to happen to the team in 100 years. However, I have a feeling the Cubs are like the girlfriend and the city/fans are like the boyfriend in this sketch (NSFW):

3.) And finally, pease don't forget Funny Ha-Ha is Friday. It'll be a delightful show and a wonderful way for you to kick off your weekend.

Follow Claire Zulkey @Zulkey