Bob Andelman Interviews

(Originally broadcast October 15, 2007) Forget the days of wading through plot and dialogue just to get to the moment where Phoebe Cates pops open her bikini top in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Or when Sherilyn Fenn gets randy in Two Moon Junction. Mr. Skin, via his website at www.mrskin.com and his just released second book Mr. Skin’s Skintastic Video Guide, The 501 Greatest Movies for Sex and Nudity on DVD, can tell you alphabetically exactly how far to fast-forward just to get to the good parts. Skin time, what body parts are exposed, size, skin color, hair color, you get the idea. Mr. Skin is nothing if not thorough. And for those who think there must be a finite supply of these moments, let me just say that today alone Mr. Skin added seventy new pictures and twenty-one video clips to his archive. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. (You can also catch Mr. Skin’s weekly DVD reports on “The Howard Stern Show.”)

(Originally broadcast November 29, 2007) Mort Walker is the dean and—in some ways—the curator of American cartoonists. Best known for his long-running strips “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi & Lois,” Walker, 84, is also a bedrock member of the National Cartoonists Society, and he’s the founder and energy behind the National Cartoon Museum. This is the third time I’ve had the pleasure of Mort’s company over the last 20 years. I enjoy interviewing him because he says what’s on his mind, and what’s on his mind is never dull. But just in case my questions aren’t sharp enough for this American comic strip master, I’ve called in reinforcements. Ray Billingsley, creator of the “Curtis” strip and an old friend of Walker’s, kindly contributed questions today. So did a newer member of the fraternity, Mark Tatulli, creator of “Heart of the City” and America’s fastest-growing new strip, “LIO.”

(Originally broadcast August 9, 2007) Like most Americans, I don’t have the best eating habits. I generally try to follow the 80/20 rule. I make an effort to eat smart and well about 80 percent of the time and give in to my inner teenager the other 20 percent, having an occasional burger and fries. Over the last 25 years, we’ve been barraged by media and marketing that urge us to eat a better diet and make better choices at every meal, and one of the magazines long at the forefront of this effort is Time Warner’s Cooking Light, and I should know, my wife has stacks of back issues all over the house. Joining me today is Mary Kay Culpepper, editor of Cooking Light, which she took over in January 2001. Since then, the magazine’s audience has grown to more than eleven and a half million readers, and it seems safe to assume that at least a few of them have improved their health by following the ideas and recipes in Cooking Light.

(Originally broadcast May 19, 2007) I love to read. They don’t start calling you Mr. Media because you’re illiterate, of course, and magazines have always fascinated me. When I pass a newsstand, I absolutely must stop and see what’s new and different. Drives my wife crazy. My garage is littered with the carcasses of many forgotten publications, including Might, which was the first most people ever heard of Dave Eggers, and Smart, which gave a lift to a young Terry McDonnell, now editor of Sports Illustrated. Somewhere out there is also a copy of 7 Days, the short-lived city magazine that put Adam Moss on the map. Moss recently led his new magazine, New York, to three big wins in the 2007 National Magazine Awards, contributing to the 0 for 9 shutout of The New Yorker and its respected editor, David Remnick. Talking media, and magazines in particular, is great sport for me, so imagine my delight when Lisa Granatstein agreed to do a Mr. Media interview. Lisa is the managing editor of Mediaweek and editor of Mediaweek.com. She’s a brand name in media coverage and has been so for nearly a decade. Earlier in her career, Lisa was a reporter for Time magazine and an associate editor of its technology spin-off, Time Digital. She’s also worked at US News & World Report, Conde Nast Traveler Online, and she was a stringer for The New York Times metro desk.

(Originally broadcast February 22, 2007) Lee Salem is a guy I’ve admired for many, many years. As the president and editor of Universal Press Syndicate, he is the man responsible for recognizing a slew of creative talent that impacted American pop culture over the last 30-plus years. The origins of Garry Trudeau and “Doonesbury,” Gary Larson and “The Far Side,” Bill Watterson and “Calvin and Hobbes,” Lynn Johnston and “For Better or Worse” and Cathy Guisewite and “Cathy,” all can be traced back to the man I’m about to interview. I had my own up-close and personal moment with Lee Salem. Mr. Media was originally a weekly syndicated column, one distributed by Universal Press Syndicate from July 1996 to May 1998. I remember my first email from Lee, suggesting Universal was interested in distributing the column, which until then had been self-syndicated. He even invited me out to Kansas City, where I met a half-dozen people – including Sue Roush, Bill Mitchell and Darrell Coleman - who I stayed friendly with for many years to come. And on that trip, seeing how awed I was by whom I was with and my surroundings, Lee jokingly invited me to take a spin in his office chair. Who could resist? Would a political junkie refuse the chance to sit in the President’s chair at the Oval Office? Would a Trekkie turn down the opportunity to take the con from Captain Kirk? It was a pretty cool ride for a guy who dubbed himself “Mr. Media.”

(Originally broadcast May 10, 2007) Charlie Chaplin did it in The Great Dictator. Mel Brooks did it in The Producers with the song and dance number "Springtime for Hitler." And my guest today, the Emmy-nominated Larry Thomas, did it, too. He’s been an actor for 25 years and is a veteran of dozens of films, TV shows, and hundreds of theater performances. Larry recently finished shooting the film Postal and was seen on “Arrested Development,” “Hot Properties," “Threshold,” “Scrubs,” and a Lexus commercial as a crazed pre-Bugsy visionary selling the idea of Vegas. Last year, Larry completed a 3- city, 140-show production of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” the female version, starring Barbara Eden. Who the hell is Larry Thomas? No answers for you, not yet anyway. Be patient, my friends. You’re not going to want to miss this interview.

(Originally broadcast May 10, 2007) Writing the biography of a well-known person in pop culture is an assignment fraught with trap doors, two-way mirrors, and shackles. Some writers even disdain their subjects. Others hopelessly suck up to the person, if living, in hopes of winning their favor. Journalists working the genre, however, are usually after something more. They took on the life of an individual because they believe -- through professional research and interviews -- that they can add more color or depth to what’s known about the figure’s public and private lives. Today’s Mr. Media guest, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, has trod the path of biography and ghostwritten autobiographies a number of times in his career. He wrote Steal This Dream about the life of 1960s dissident Abbie Hoffman. He helped Howard Stern pen his life story in two memorable books, Private Parts and Miss America. When Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers needed someone to help tell his story, Kiedis turned to Sloman. The book many people remember Sloman best for, however, may well be his chronicle of Bob Dylan’s remarkable 1975 Rolling Thunder Review concert tour, On the Road with Bob Dylan. That is also where he earned his unusual nickname, which I’m told he wears with pride like a badge of courage. Sloman’s latest, written with William Kalush is The Secret Life of Houdini, the Making of America’s First Superhero.

(Originally broadcast August 22, 2007) In the 1970’s, my dad never made any purchase of substance without consulting Consumer Reports. Vacuum cleaners, toaster ovens, window air conditioners, used cars -- he never made a move without CR. In those pre-Internet days, he collected the magazine’s back issues the way I collected comic books. I just kept my comics a lot neater and more organized than he did his magazines. Today’s Consumer Reports is very different from the one my dad admired, thanks to the Internet. There are a whole host of web sites and services competing to provide consumer information in what used to be a niche owned solely by Consumer Reports. Consumers now have instant free access to consumer-written product performance reviews from Amazon.com to Epinions and everywhere in between. In the wired world, it seems, everybody has an opinion and wants to share it. We’ll talk about that today with my guest Kim Kleman. Kim is the new editor of Consumer Reports, the flagship publication of Consumers Union. She’s also an old acquaintance whom I worked with at the Tampa Tribune twenty years ago and whom my wife worked with at the St. Petersburg Times. Kim joined Consumer Reports in 1997 and has since been managing editor, deputy editor, and special assignments editor, shepherding award-winning investigative projects. Earlier this year, Kim was promoted to editor-in-chief.

Josh Neufeld is the writer/artist of the Xeric Award-winning graphic travelogue A Few Perfect Hours (and Other Stories from Southeast Asia & Central Europe). Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Neufeld spent three weeks as an American Red Cross volunteer in Biloxi, Mississippi. The blog entries he kept about that experience turned into a self-published book, Katrina Came Calling, which in turn led to A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. Neufeld works primarily in the realm of nonfiction comics. His work has been featured in The Vagabonds, Keyhole, and Titans of Finance, as well as in many comic anthologies, newspapers, magazines, and literary journals. He is a long-time artist for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, and his art has been exhibited in gallery and museum shows in the United States and Europe. Neufeld lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, the writer Sari Wilson, and their daughter.

DailyMe Inc., a digital media and technology company, specializes in products for the discovery and distribution of news content. The company’s technology platform powers a highly personalized consumer news experience on DailyMe.com as well as a suite of publisher solutions that includes news recommendations based on user behavior and contextual relevance. The site is brought to us by media veterans Neil Budde and Eduardo Hauser. Hauser has 18 years of online and offline media experience in his prior roles including: Founder & Executive Vice President, AOL Latin America; Vice President of News and Information, Venevision (the 2nd largest producer of Spanish language programming in the world) and Managing Director, Cisneros Group of Companies. Hauser is active in supporting the development of media, journalism and free speech; he is a member of the Board of Directors of NPR (National Public Radio). Budde has significantly influenced the online news space throughout his career. He was the founding Editor and Publisher of The Wall Street Journal Online, having formulated the original idea for the site and developed it into one of the most successful subscription news sites. He would later build Yahoo! News into the No. 1 news provider on the web and then serve as Vice President and Editor in Chief of Yahoo! News, Finance and Sports. Before founding The Wall Street Journal Online, Budde spent a decade in various editorial roles at three daily newspapers.

Debbie Zoller has two Emmy nominations for her remarkable achievement of creating the look for AMC’s hugely successful series, ”Mad Men”. She is nominated for Outstanding Make-up for Single Camera Series (non-prosthetic) and Outstanding Prosthetic Make-up for a Series, Movie or Special. The makeup is part of what has become one of the most talked-about period looks in television history. Zoller describes the make-up on Mad Men as “very peaches and cream. An uber-feminine style that makes men’s heads turn.” Every episode progresses in real time, and Zoller says, “I can introduce certain shades of lipsticks or nail polish in this new second season that I was restricted from using in the first because they didn’t exist at the time.” The make-up in Mad Men has become a character itself as Weiner incorporated cosmetic line Belle Jolie into the series. Zoller has clearly made her mark, as she is most-often asked about the famous episode for which she had to create a lipstick palette of 20 shades which were featured in the episode “Mark Your Man.” She hunted for the appropriate color lipsticks for each secretary at Sterling Cooper to try on in the scene. When Zoller heard that the costume designer was going to create a “fat suit” for the unknowingly pregnant Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), she suggested prosthetics and without hesitation show creator Matthew Weiner said, “Absolutely. Do it!” “Matthew Weiner and I share a huge attention to detail. I love working with him and all of the members of the ‘Mad Men’ team.”

(Originally broadcast May 4, 2007.) Politics has always been dirty, nasty, bare-knuckle affairs. In the American two-party system, one side always blames the other for whatever ails the country. The new twist in the 21st Century is the emergence of political Web sites and political blogs in particular. Anyone with a point of view can get a free blog from blogger.com or wordpress.com and be online telling the world what they think about anything, anywhere in about ten minutes or less. Some of these new voices are surprisingly thoughtful, literate, and inspiring. Some are just idiots with cyber-megaphones. Some are on the right, some are on the left, but there is no doubt that the best of them and some who are just louder than the others will wield unprecedented influence going into the 2008 Presidential primaries and election cycle. One of the rising stars of the genre is John Amato, agent provocateur of the best-named blog of the bunch, CrooksandLiars.com.

(Originally broadcast July 25, 2007.) Joltin’ Joe Sinnott. You have to be pretty damn good at what you do for someone to name you Joltin’. The name stuck to Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, of course, and is also part of the eternal legend of Joltin’ Joe Sinnott. Unless you’re a comic book fan, you may not know Sinnott. But if you recognize the names of Stan “The Man” Lee and Jack “King” Kirby, Joltin’ Joe will be forever connected to their accomplishments. Lee wrote the stories, Kirby drew them, and Sinnott inked them, starting with the fifth issue of the Fantastic Four in 1961 on through the first appearance of the Silver Surfer and beyond. He’s also contributed his talents to Thor, The Hulk, and Captain America, to name just a few. You can see Sinnott's work on three new Marvel Super Hero postage stamps - two Silver Surfers and a Thing -- that were released in late July by the United State Post Office. Sinnott is the subject of a new oral history called Brush Strokes With Greatness, compiled and written by Tim Lasiuta. It’s packed with illustrations from his fifty- plus year career, starting with a Timely Comics story called “The Man Who Wouldn’t Die” on through the development of the legendary Marvel universe.

Jim Melvin has been a friend of mine for more than twenty years and, for as long as I’ve known him, his driving interest has been writing an epic fantasy series, something that might find shelf space alongside J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. But life kept getting in the way. He was married, raised two wonderful daughters, had a full-time job as an editor at the St. Petersburg Times, and did all the other good stuff that eats up time and interferes with achieving those very personal dreams we all entertain. But that’s life, right? Well, a few years ago, Jim decided it was now or never. He retired from the newspaper, took his family and savings, and moved to North Carolina. He put everything else aside to fulfill what he believed to be his destiny and nearly two- thousand pages that became The Death Wizard Chronicles. The first book in the six-book epic fantasy was released in September by Rain Publishing, and a new installment will be delivered to bookstores every thirty days until the entire series is available in February 2008. It’s a hell of a story, a hell of a series, and Jim Melvin is a hell of a guy.

You may not know my guest today by name, but it’s safe to say that if you read an English-language newspaper anywhere in the world, Howard Finberg is having at least an indirect effect on its content. Finberg is Director of Interactive Learning for NewsU, the online training and education arm of The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. That’s where I am today, in fact. NewsU has enjoyed explosive growth since opening its virtual doors on April 11, 2005. Starting with just a few courses and little more than word of mouth advertising, the mostly free training for journalists now has thirty-five courses and 35,000 registered users. In the interest of complete disclosure, I have often worked on assignment for the Poynter Institute and even wrote two white papers and the script for an animated video for NewsU. In fact, I wrote the following Dr. Seuss-inspired rhyme, which Howard himself recorded for NewsU: You can do it wearing a hat. You can do it with your cat. You can do it at night, And you can do it when you look afright. You can do it when things are slow, Or when you can’t get the creative juices to flow. You can do it when mother’s not there, And you can do it in your underwear.