If You're Just Joining Us with Jon Armstrong

TV Writer and Producer Rob Long Talks about Hollywood, Cheers, Humor, and Writing on a Container Ship

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:00:34 +0000

Rob Long is a TV writer and producer who wore and produced the hit show Cheers among others. He hosts a behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood life radio commentary: Martini Shot. (It’s also a podcast. - iTunes link). He is also a contributing editor for the National Review and Newsweek International and others.

Rob and I talked about writing, how to book yourself onto a container ship to get some actual work done in this modern world, the TV show Cheers, humor, drinking, and how he got his start in Hollywood.

Amazon links to Rob’s books: Conversations with My Agent and Set up, Joke, Set Up, Joke. And a link to his Twitter feed.

Author Richard Kadrey Talks about Fantasy, George Bush, and Heavy Drinking

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:04:13 +0000

Richard Kadrey is a novelist, freelance writer, and photographer based in San Francisco. Starting over 20 years ago as one of the first major writers of cyberpunk, with the classic Metrophage, his other novels include Kamikaze L’Amour, Butcher Bird and his latest, Sandman Slim.

Richard and I talk about his transition from cyberpunk to fantasy, George Bush, heavy drinking, and writing.

Sandman Slim: A Novel (Amazon)

The Youtube video that is quoted in the piece.

Download Richard’s Butcher Bird for free (scroll down just above the download for my novel!) at Nigh Shade Books.

Download Metrophage, Richard’s first novel.

“My T-Shirt Says It All” A Documentary about Life Death and T-Shirts

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:46:37 +0000

My guest this show is Jacob Fenston. He’s a freelance journalist in Oakland, California, whose work has appeared on NPR, KQED, and Public Radio Stations across America.

I heard Jacob’s excellent (and often hilarious) piece “My T-Shirt Says It All” and wanted to talk to him about it. This show features many cuts from that work, but if you’d like to hear the whole piece, please do so at Jacob Fenston’s website. This links to Jacob’s homepage.

Author Paul Witcover talks writing, publishing, golf, and more.

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:02:01 +0000

Paul Witcover is the author of three novels, several non-fiction books, many short stories and is the co-creator, with Elizabeth Hand, of the cult comic book series Anima. He has served as the curator of the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series. His new collection is titled Everland and Other Stories.

We talk about his writing, his writing career, publishing, an odd job writing about golf, and more.

Menswear designer Jhane Barnes talks Star Trek, Secret Japanese Technology, and Fashion

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:37:06 +0000

Jhane Barnes designs men’s sportswear, casual, and tailored clothes. Besides menswear, she also designs eyewear, textiles, furniture, carpets, and more. She was recently on NOVA to talk about how she uses fractals in her designs.

I recently visited Jhane’s design offices in New York, and we talked about being a fashionable nerd, fractals, secret Japanese factories, and Star Trek.

Show notes:
In the second half of the podcast, she shows me her top-of-the-line shirt, titled Dentrite. See it here.

Jhane’s website is JhaneBarnes.com. I also mentioned her slightly hidden outlet store, which is called JBXtras.com, where you can pick up extras and last-season’s items at a discount.

Fantasy Author, James Enge, talks about writing, unicorns, talking squids and more…

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:55:59 +0000

James Enge’s fiction has appeared in Black Gate, Flashing Swords, and everydayfiction.com. He is an instructor of classical languages at a Midwestern university. His first novel, Blood of Ambrose, was just released by Pyr Books.

James and I talked about his pseudonym, sci-fi and fantasy, writing, unicorns, and talking squids.

His website is www.jamesenge.com. Pyr Book’s page for James Enge’s book has free sample chapters. Blood of Ambrose at Amazon.
(Author photo: ©J. M. Pfundstein)

Journalist Rowenna Davis Discusses China’s Illegal “Gold Farms”

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:56:03 +0000

Rowenna Davis is freelance journalist from north London. As a features writer, she specializes in social and political affairs, and has written opinion pieces for the The Independent, The Guardian, the New Internationalist, and many other publications.

She and I discuss several recent articles were she explored the murky world of “Gold Farming,” which is the illegal world of video game cheating - often for the very popular World of Warcraft.

Link to her article: Welcome to the new gold mines: Being paid to play games all day long sounds like a dream job – but for thousands of Chinese ‘gold farmers’, the virtual reality is sheer hard graft.

More Guardian.co.uk articles by Rowenna Davis.

Lou Anders discusses the iPhone, Tricorder, Batmobile, writing and more!

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:44:43 +0000

Lou Anders is the editorial director of Prometheus Books’ science fiction and fantasy imprint Pyr, as well as several anthologies. In 2000, he served as the Executive Editor of Bookface.com, and before that he worked as the Los Angeles Liaison for Titan Publishing Group. He is the author of The Making of Star Trek: First Contact (Titan Books, 1996), and has published over 500 articles in such magazines as The Believer, Publishers Weekly, Dreamwatch, DeathRay, free inquiry, Star Trek Monthly, Star Wars Monthly, Babylon 5 Magazine, Sci Fi Universe, Doctor Who Magazine, and Manga Max.

Lou and I talked about the iPhone, tricorders, the batmobile, writing, errings, and his wife’s cooking among other things.

Interview with Textile Scientist, Robert Beaulieu Part Two

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:40:23 +0000

Professor Robert Beaulieu teaches textile science and development at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. This is the second part of our talk.

This time he discusses wool, those labels in all our shirts and clothes, distressing leather jackets, and case of about a mouton collar.

Interview with Textile Scientist, Robert Beaulieu

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:53:16 +0000

Professor Robert Beaulieu teaches textile science and development at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. I took an introduction to textile science class more than ten years ago, but I think about the class often and have told stories borrowed from Robert’s lectures at cocktail parties.

We talk about Levis Strauss, jeans, denim, polyester leisure suits, pills, and more. And this is part one of the interview, which will continue soon.

FIT’s Textile Development and Marketing home page.

A link to the YouTube movie of the guitar prodigy who plays Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.

Interview with Alex Grecian author of the comic Proof

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:21:00 +0000

Alexander Grecian left a successful advertising career, representing clients as diverse as Sprint and Harley-Davidson, to become a freelance writer. He’s been published in several indy comics anthologies, including Negative Burn (Image) and one of the 24-Hour Comics books (the one that also included stories by Neil Gaiman and Steve Bissette). He wrote the critically acclaimed original graphic novel, Seven Sons (AiT/Planet Lar) and he currently writes and letters the comic book series Proof (Image Comics).

He’s also created numerous typefaces for his own foundry, Elemeno, storyboarded and directed television commercials and designed logos for many companies and publications. Alex’s site is http://alexandergrecian.com/

Interview with Author Charlie Huston

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:08:16 +0000

Charlie Huston is the author of the Hank Thompson trilogy which includes the Edgar-nominated “Six Bad Things: A NovelSix Bad Things,” the Joe Pitt Casebooks, the Los Angeles Times bestseller, and “The Shotgun Rule: A NovelThe Shotgun Rule.” I spoke to him between readings for his new book titled, “The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death: A NovelThe Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.” We spoke about sports, giving away books, writing, and eavesdropping among other things.

Charlie Huston’s web-site is PulpNoir.com. Click here for the Wikipedia entry about him.

Interview with Professor and Author Mark Okrant

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:22:58 +0000

Mark Okrant is a professor of tourism management at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. A few years ago, when the University cut back on his classes field trips, Mark wrote a murder mystery at a resort that dealt with tourism issues and now he and other schools use his novel as a textbook.

Visit Mark’s site.

Part One of How I Became a Phone Phreak by Evan Doorbell

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:22:57 +0000

Evan Doorbell was the pseudonym used by a well-known but somewhat mysterious phone phreak of the 1970s. His claim to fame is the vast archive of high-quality tape recordings he made of the telephone network of the period, many of which have in recent years been edited and narrated by Doorbell himself, and presented on the World Wide Web at fellow phreak, Mark Bernay’s, web site, Phone Trips.

In this edition of If You’re Just Joining Us, we listen to part one of this amazing recording about phone noises from the 70’s, which is really about curiosity and noticing.

More Phone Phreak tapes, including parts 2 through 6 of Evan Doorbell’s “How I Became” series can be found at: Phone Trips. For MP3 versions of Evan Doorbell’s story they are at ftp://ftp.wideweb.com/GroupBell/ Just scroll down and look for HowBPhreak2HQ etc.

See the Wikipedia entry on Phreaking.

Interview with Photographer David Friedman

jon@ifyourejustjoiningus.com (Jon Armstrong) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:50:43 +0000

David Friedman is a professional photographer based in New York. For several years he was the staff photographer for Ralph Lauren. We talked about his visit to a denim distressing factory in Kentucky where they take new jeans, wash, bleach, tear and shred them. We also spoke about his own photography, a story about a very messy man, and his blog Ironic Sans.

David Friedman’s Photography.

David’s blog Ironic Sans.

Additional audio:
In Kentucky, Jeans Get The Right ‘Wear’ by Noah Adams

Corcoran Museum Showcases Photographer Richard Avedon’s ‘Portraits of Power’ By Susan Logue