Comedy legend Merrill Markoe joins The Virtual Memories Show to prove Christopher Hitchens wrong: women can be very funny! We talk about her career, helping launch Late Night with David Letterman, her opinions on today's late-night TV scene, the show she'd write for if she was starting out in TV now, her literary influences, her favorite cartoonists, and why Curly was the greatest of the Three Stooges!
The Virtual Memories Show
Season 4, Episode 25 - Dogs of LA
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host Gil Roth and you are listening to a weekly podcast about books and life and dogs, not necessarily in that order. You can subscribe to the show and find all our past episodes at the iTunes Store. You can also find those episodes, get on our email list and make a donation to the show at either of our websites, VMSPod.com, or chimeraobscura.com/vm. You can find us on Twitter @VMSPod at facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow and at virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com. Oh, happy post 4th of July. Here's hoping everybody still has all their fingers and toes. We stayed in for the fourth, partly because I'm a boring old man, but also because one of my dogs is just terrified of fireworks and thunder and trains and large buses. But anyway, I'd have felt bad leaving them all alone to cower in the guest bedroom or the bathtub while we were gone. So instead, we stayed in and watched Arrange's The New Black while Rufus coured in the guest bedroom on his own. I guess the bathtub's only for how shaking thunder. But for all the little concessions I make for the dogs, they did manage to help me line up this week's guest. One of my previous guests, Drew Friedman, suggested I contact Merrill Marco about recording an episode during a California trip. At the time, she was a little ambivalent about doing one. I think the feeling she didn't have much to add to all of her past interviews over the years. Still, I persevered once I locked in my San Diego trip for June. I told her I'd be up in LA for a few days and could drop in or meet her away from home on a neutral ground to record. She was still undecided, and then I played the Greyhound card. Knowing how much she loves dogs, I decided to send her a link to pictures of my Greyhounds in all sorts of silly positions. I like to think that was the factor that pushed her over the top. In fact, there's a segment in the middle of our conversation that sort of comes off as a Greyhound adoption PSA. I apologize for talking so darn much during this one, but Merrill seemed to enjoy hearing stories of the dogs, and she did have some pretty strong opinions of her own regarding Greyhound racing, and I felt that that sort of all added up to a pretty good conversation. The one dog-related segment I did have to cut comes about 10 minutes from the end of the talk when her dog-hiking pal came home, opened the door, and let four or five dogs just come bursting into the house. One of them bounded right at me, knocked over the whole recorder set up, sent the recorder flying, microphone spinning off the table and all that, but they didn't break anything, and the dog was crazy affectionate. If anything, the real reason I cut that segment is because I immediately went into silly dog affection mode, which no one needs to hear. But if you listen in the background during the last few minutes of this episode, you'll hear one of her dogs panting at high speed, in case you're wondering what that weird oscillating noise is. That's dog number two, just panting in a corner like a maniac. Anyway, Merrill was a joy to talk to between comedy history and her love of dogs, and her writing tips, and revelation about comic books, and more. There's plenty, this woman's seen a lot, she's created a lot, she's had a hell of a career. This is the bio that Merrill provided. Merrill Marco has written for TV series, such as New Heart and Sex in the City, and co-created the original Letterman Show, for which she won five Emmys. She's published eight books, four collections of funny essays and four novels, including one she wrote with Andy Preboy, the man she lives with, called The Psycho X Game. She's written for a wide variety of publications, including, but not limited to, the New York Times, LA Times, Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, Real Simple, Vanity Fair, et cetera, et cetera. She also does stand up and did a number of her own specials for HBO in the 80s and 90s, including being a performer writer on Not Necessarily the News. She had a talk radio show for a while, and was a funny lifestyle reporter for local news for a few years. I'm sure Merrill would hate being called a living legend, but a lot of people in comedy sure do look up to her. And now, the virtual memories conversation with Merrill Marco. (upbeat music) - Who's the funniest person you ever wrote for? - I'm right for that many people. - Who's the funniest person you worked with? - The funniest person I worked with, jeez. - Who was funny at the time, not somebody who blossomed after, but. - Well, you know, Chris Elliott really makes me laugh, but I never wrote for him. He was just, he was my assistant when I first hired him. He's always makes me Google. And, jeez, I didn't write for that many other people. I worked for a couple of shows. I wrote some sitcom episodes. I didn't, I mean, I love Bob Newhart. And I didn't really get to know him or anything. I mean, I don't know if he's funny. Yeah, I wrote a couple of episodes of the show that was at the inn. - Oh, yeah, the other Newhart, the one where he wakes up in bands. - The one where it's Larry Darryl and Darryl. I wrote a few episodes of that. And I think Bob Newhart is really hilarious, but I never met him really. I mean, so I can't say that he's the funniest. You know, that's where it's a weird question. I mean, I'm. - Yeah, you're just writing a script. - I wrote a script for him. I think he's really funny. I can't say how funny he is as a human. - But worked with the material that you had. You felt delivered on what you were writing. - You know, that isn't even the concern. When you write a show like that, you're writing in a group of writers and you're trying to please. - I see. - The people at the top of the writing staff and. - I mean, what was your experience with that, really? You're writing in spec initially. - Well, I got it. I was working on the new laugh-in. They were bringing laugh-in back was my first job. And it was. It was really. It made me laugh to even be on a staff 'cause I had just gotten out of art school and I just thought it was really absurd that I had managed to land a job. And it was really making me laugh and everything, but it was a horrible job. I mean, it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't that horrible, but I mean, the show wasn't funny. The stuff we were writing wasn't getting on. It was that kind of thing. It was really had nothing to do with writing, really. It was you write things and then nobody uses them. And that's what you, and then the show comes on and it's awful and then you go home. - And your name rolls up at the credits and people. - Yeah, but they rolls by so fast they can't read it anyway. So it really doesn't, it was amusing. It was nice to be employed. - I mean, it's a lot better than the alternative, but with the time you spent building the late show, was there a sense at the time that-- - You know, I never worked on the late show. - It was late night. - I worked on late night. - Late night. I always grew up the name, sorry, late night with David Letterman. Did you at the time get the significance of what the show was, like the way that it became this sort of trailblazing game changer for TV? - I never got it any other time I worked there because I was living with a host who was telling me every single day that we were getting canceled and that nobody liked the show. So I really missed the whole thing. I was in a bunker and people since then, years for the next X number of years and even currently expect that I would have memories of how it was this or that and my memories were just like hanging on for dear life and having no idea that anyone that we were succeeding given a remotely. - At what point did it feel secure? - Never. - Really, your entire time. - No, I finally left. - Okay, that was it. Okay, I thought maybe there was a point at which, okay, it's solid now I can walk away instead it was the screw this, I got to walk away. - No, no, no, no, it was, no, no, no, no. He was very, very devoted to how badly we were doing and it's a topic. It was a very favorite topic. - And I carried over personality wise in general that was just, you know, or was he really, was the show the focus of his being like that? - He's very very, you know, that was the show. He always wanted his own show and we, this was like our third pass at it. And he didn't feel he had any more chances after this so it was a gun to the head all the time and you know, we weren't allowed to make any mistakes and everything was considered a mistake and everything we'd done if it hadn't brought the house down and it was considered a bomb and it was, I mean, this from him and only to me. So nobody else knew about it. - Headwriter, that's, that's-- - Well yeah, so that's why I stepped down as a head writer pretty early. - I'm not always. - Because I just thought I'll get out of the lung and fire. - Did it help? - No. - You had to step out of the relationship to do that, okay. - Yeah, that was basically, it was, I mean, you know, looking back on it, I thought a lot of people asking me about this stuff lately because he's retiring and really when I look back on it, I would have to say that had I been able to rewrite the whole thing from the ground up, it would have been far preferable to not be involved personally at all and only be a writer. To have doubled up on that was a real big mistake and couldn't coexist. So, and since as it turns out, I contributed things that people really care about to this day, I guess I would really rather have just been the head writer and had no personal relationship with him at all. I just got home at night to someone else. (laughs) That would have worked out better. That would have been, then I would be now reveling in a, like I'm friendly with a lot of the guys I wrote with back then and they all have happy memories. You know, I was keeping everybody happy. I was doing not what Milch did but more what Vince Gilligan did. I was trying to make things protected for the people I cared about. And I would rather have had that experience. (laughs) So that's the experience I would aim for it. In my next life, if I get, they give me a note sheet and they ask me to rewrite, but to sign up for what I would like, that would be a hell I would sign up for. If in fact, I had to sign up for that, I would sign up for it differently. - And I assume no communication or relationship at all with Letterman? - No. - Okay, I mean, I assume, and I don't like it. - I'm on the show a couple of times in the 90s. - Okay, I saw some clips from like the, yeah, on YouTube, there was some stuff from, I couldn't tell what the dates were. You can't tell by his hair, generally how bad it is, you know, how late the show was up. - Yeah, he's got, yeah, it was, yeah, well, I can tell by the hair, but the-- - It's like carbon dating, except with ball patent. - Yeah, well, it's very much like that, it's, yeah. - And people are calling now about, you know-- - Well, there's a couple of people, there's at least two people that I know who are writing books about them. - Or about the first year of the show, it's really what they seem to be writing books about. They were certainly interrogating me with an image of my life about where I, if I agree. - Do you feel any sense of, I don't wanna say loyalty, but a sort of proprietary, like you don't wanna give away too much of that, not where you're protecting any-- - No, I don't give away that much. - Okay. - I give away the amount I just gave to you. - Okay, that's a pretty good level. - Okay, now I feel like I belong, okay. Do you watch other late night TV or the late night scene at all? Do you have any-- - No, you know, I don't really watch that much TV, I know nobody's allowed to say that anymore, everybody hates when people say that. And, but the truth is, I only, I binge watch, either binge watch the whole series, like six of them in a row, or I watch clips on the computer, I'm on the computer with a ton, because I write. And, and I watch, you know, the things I've seen of late night TV, I've just watched in clips, I've not sat down, turned on a show, and sat through, any of them, for years and years and years. But, you know, I see, like every time there's something that, that Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel or whoever are trying to make viral, I get to see that clip, and then I usually look at it sometimes if they're convincing enough in their little teaser. - Do you ever think of how the writing you guys did back then would have translated into this sort of era? Did you do things not knowing that there would be a YouTube and all that, but, you know, could you think of how the writing then would have translated into this sort of viral world, or did you feel like you're writing it in a different way? - Well, I think it probably would have been all right. I mean, everything would have been different in that we couldn't check the computer then, so we were, you know, at the time, what I was doing for research was reading the phone book. (laughing) That's how I was finding things that weren't on TV, that you didn't see on TV yet, where I was just going through Street by Street in New York and looking for what there was, you could take the camera student, nobody was going to, so that's what I was doing. And now, of course, with the internet, I mean, I would be doing it on a more vast scale, because it would be so much easier. - Did you feel that sort of work back then would have translated into this era pretty well? Those remotes and-- - Well, you mean, had nobody ever done them before, they probably would have, but by now, everybody else has done many versions of them, so I mean, I wouldn't want to be in there just being another person who I would, if it were me right now, and I was starting now, and that show had happened the way we did it, and I was starting now, I think I grew up for Eric Andre. - I don't know. - Take a look at his show. It's chaos and it's revolution. It's like he opens the show by hurling himself through a set and breaking everything, and then he has a group of band members who can't play instruments, and occasionally, someone takes out a gun and kills one of the guests, and it's like, I think I'd be attracted to that, because that's all that's left, really, you know? - Complete anarchy. - Anarchy and hostility and unveiled hostility, you know? - Is it online show, or is it on cable? - It's on Cartoon Network. - Oh, that makes sense. - It's, you know, it makes Zach Galifianakis appear to be the polite, younger brother, kind of. And it's very funny, and I would still be looking for, as I was doing then, what I was doing at the time was, our task was to not be the Tonight Show, which left the whole world open, because nobody was doing anything that was of the Tonight Show. There were various variations on the Tonight Show, and that was it. So, we, the guys I heard, and myself, had the whole world to just kind of do, nobody was doing that stuff. And we did it. We were really pretty thorough, and we ate up a lot of territory, and now there's, you know, where you see real original thinking now is that some of the hosts have a whole other skill set. So, like Jimmy Fallon has sings and dances and stuff, and he's way more at ease as a performer than Dave ever was, and Dave has his certain restrictions, and Fallon has a different set. So, they're, they, writing for him, they bring that concept, he kind of stuff, but they get to go in a whole other direction, so. - As somebody who was there at the beginning with the show, what do you think, either what do you think, or what do you think Letterman would think of the show 25 years later? The Dave of like 1980, '81, the head writer from, you know, those years, to see what the show became. - Well, he hated it at the time, so I'm guessing. - Yeah, she likes where it is now. - Yeah, they're not looking back, he's fonder now, or he's just still like, ugh. - Yeah, I just wonder if the younger self would have looked and said, really, Charlie's Theron, this is what I gotta do, you know, if he would have sneered at the older show, the older Christmas show. - Well, we were very dizzy at the time, trying to book different kinds of guests, and then once he hit the show he does now, it's, you know, he's the, he's the old guard, so he, he's the one who has Charlie. - Right, and I just wonder if younger Dave would have sneered at current Dave for, you know, having that sort of show. - I don't know, he liked broadcasting much standard traditional broadcasting far more than I did. He was a big Johnny Carson fan, I always found Johnny Carson really sort of stiff and boring. And I don't might say that, I never thought he looked like he would like me, and I never loved, like, I would probably have anything to say to him. Dave looked at him and saw a fun uncle that you would enjoy goofing around with, and so we just had, he liked the old Tom Snyder show. - Yeah, I was a kid when it was on in New York in the '70s. - Yeah, so he liked that stuff. I don't think he would, I think he would look at himself now and see him and admire himself. - Yeah, and do you think any opinions on Colbert and whether-- - I love Stephen Colbert, I think that's fantastic. - As do I, but I have no idea how that translates into that rule. - It'd be interesting. I mean, A.B. Colbert was sick of the, the straight jacket on him. - Yeah. - If it, in fact, it was a straight jacket. He was always busting through it anyway. It was always the most sort of mind-boggling, and he's a right-wing talk show host who says that. - Yeah, it inadvertently defends gay marriage and this and the, yeah. - It was always very interesting that way, and they did a brilliant job at it. It'll, I think he's so smart, I'd be surprised if he can't make it work, but then over the years there was all those shows that couldn't figure it out, you know, like when it looked to everybody at one point that Chevy Chase was gonna be the next-- - Oh, it's gonna go with Magic Jones. - Well, Magic Jones is not a thing, but, you know-- - Yeah, I-- - Why did, you know, when you look at some of the people who do make it, why didn't Magic Johnson make it? It's really, it's a particular conversational orientation. - Oh, trust me, after 75, 80 of these things, I realized, wow, I was embarrassing a shit in those early ones. You know, I just didn't know how to speak to someone when to let things go, when to actually, yeah, that story's going on forever, let's-- - Well, that's what editing is for. - The book is pretty fun. - I was when my dad was dying, right? - My dad died maybe 15 years ago, and he was sick for a while first, and I was doing a book promotion, and I was down at his apartment, and it was only the two of us there in the apartment, and he was in a bed in the next room, and I was on a telephone promotion, and then in the middle of this telephone promotion, live radio in New York, and I'm just sitting in this back bedroom, I hear my dad going, "Meryl, Meryl, come here, Meryl!" And I go, "I didn't know what to do! "Like, I'm gonna get a yell?" Like, I finally said, "I'm terribly sorry, "I'm gonna have to leave right now for a minute." - Yeah. - Sick father is calling me from the next room. - That's the family emergency excuse. That always works wonders, but-- - Did you feel any responsibility or mentoring need with other women, younger women writers coming out? - Me back then? - Once you were established, you know, after you stepped away from late night, had you felt, had you done that at all during your career? Do you feel any sort of, you know, shepherding other women? - You know, I feel like I've just been hanging off for dear life for years. - That's how I was wondering. - Yeah, that's why I wasn't sure if you were-- - I've never felt launched enough to be, have anything to, no, I've never really done it. That sort of stuff. My tendencies in charity have mostly to do with animals. - Which is a good thing, I think. I haven't seen the dogs yet, I'm sure. - You know, the dogs are out on their weekly hike with a group of dogs. - Okay, we do that every Sunday with the Greyhounds, it's five miles. - Well, you take them. - They're out with a, I bus comes and my friend Don brings like 10 dogs, when she returns, often they all come in here and some of them go for a swim. - You got the pool, you've got the whole house set up with a long run, they can go straight through and go. But, so, the different writing practices, or the different writing forms, you engage in TV writing, columns, picture. - I haven't done TV writing for a pretty long time here now. - Well, it's still the-- - Just so you know. - Yeah, but just the different sets of muscles they entail, how do those, or how have those processes different for you? How does writing a column, you know, working on that sort of thing differ from-- - They're all really different. Writing a sitcom, you really, the voices are, unless you create, even if you created it, there you're working inside of specific voices for particular actors, and the same would be true if you're writing, when we were doing Letterman's show, it was about concepts that the host would say yes to. And sitcoms are about staying inside of the limits of what the characters do, it's character driven comedy. When you write a column, you have to know what your own voice is, it's like doing stand up. At least if it's a personal-- - Yeah. - Kind of a column, and that takes a while. A lot of people, you know, you don't necessarily, when you come out of the orientation of writing for characters, have any idea what your own voice is. - Yeah, how long was that process for you? When did you really feel-- - Well, I used to just stand up, and I still do it just sort of intermittently, just to keep my hand in it, but I don't really do it the way real people who do it do it, where they are out doing it all the time. I do it maybe four times a year or something. You know, do the Chappelle drop-in for six hours straight, sort of-- - I don't have that ability. I at least do like 25 minutes, and then I'm in the car. I'm driving for the last three minutes, even though I'm in front of you, I'm already in my car. - Yeah. (laughs) - I don't have that, hey, let me be on stage for hours thing. But that was, it's the same voice that you do stand up with that you write a column with. If you write a novel, you have to, then you have to lock in either a narrator, voice, or a dispassionate. I mean, you got your option, so there's nothing harder than writing a full book. I mean, that is mind-boggling, really more difficult than writing a script in so many ways, or than writing a column. What you can see, a column has always got a word limitation on it, either 500 words or 800 words or even 1500 words. A book has no word limitation on it, and you've stepped into the pool with Leo Tolstoy. So then the things you have to measure up to can't even be stated, you know, the amount that you're supposed to be good, the amount-- - That's a regular refrain I use. It's my reason why I haven't written. I've only done one story in about 20 years now, and I've basically been playing off the, my idols are far, far too great for me to actually write anything on my own because they're too good, which I know is complete bullshit, and a great way to avoid actually working and measuring up. But it's worked well for me for 43 years now, so-- - Well, maybe you'll never do it. It's just, you know, nobody says you have to, there's nobody who gives a shit, so-- - That's what freed me up to write the first one about a year ago, I'm not selling this, it doesn't matter, there's no market for this sort of thing anyway, and could just sit and finally write something in a night and realize, oh, yeah, yeah, the stuff is there, it's a matter of, you know. - And the other part of it that I've found is really important is to keep trying up your game. I mean, if you just keep repeating yourself, then you are just a cliche, and you can't have nothing to be proud of, so I mean, that's partly the more that I read, and that's partly why I've been trying to read a lot. Well, I'm not watching TV unless I'm binge-watching TV, is I've just been trying to make sure I know what the person who is better than me sounds like, so I can at least aim for it. - And who are you reading? - At this particular moment, I just been reading some Tom Wolf. I hadn't seen it read his novel, and I was always sort of curious about it. I have like a bunch of stuff. I've been going through one thing after another, after another, and... - You know, who are you sort of glomming on just in general in the last year or two? - Oh, in the last year or two. Jeez, I'd have to get my Kindle out, not even the list, but I finally read, you know, Diaz. I was wondering about him. I have all those people that I've never, I read this thing called The Imperfectionists, I thought was fantastic. - Oh, I enjoyed that, the Tom Rachman book. - Yeah, I really thought that was good. - That was really, really good. Just, gee, what else? Oh, I loved The Circle by Dave Eggers. - Oh, I haven't read that. - Oh, that's fantastic. That's very Orwellian, and he really does a nice job at it. I like Dave Eggers for almost every reason. Who else? Oh, you don't want to hear the list. I'm trying to look in my mind, I'm trying to see what it says on my Kindle. - Yeah, yeah, same thing words. What was the, yeah, just, I'm flipping a screen while I'm talking, so. Well, who were your writing influences when you were young? - Well, when I decided I would first write comedy, I was very busy beating myself on the Algonquin teams. And I read a lot of Robert Benchley was, I almost had a crush on him, if he'd been alive, I would have probably been hanging around. He, I still really enjoy him, but he was a huge influence. I was actually kind of trying to do him when I was first writing essays. And then Dorothy Parker was, seemed out of my league, like she was so good, she's so, such a wordsmith that I've really been enjoying her lately, every time I read her, she just sort of makes my brain bleed. I just think, whoa, that's impressive. - If I write anything just, you know, if I nail one sentence like that, I'll feel good. - That's so good, she's really, really good. And I used to read SJ Perlman, I haven't read him in a long time. I read all of those guys a lot when I was trying to teach myself to write comedy, not knowing that I, of course, was already pushing myself out of the commercial market, even before I started. I think he totally uncomfortably-- - But if you're writing in the '40s, you would have been all said. - Yeah. - Well, I had that with mine when I discovered Bruce J. Friedman very belatedly, I realized that that, in fact, was the author I should have been, you know, modeling myself after. Well, at the same time, understanding that there's no market for Bruce J. Friedman's sort of fiction. - And friends with his son, Drew. - Yeah, who is the person who connected us? I interviewed Drew, there was an arc, I call it capturing the other Freedmen's, the whole series of interviews I've done with each of the brothers that eventually got me to their dad. But yeah, Drew was the first one, and each one of them changed the venue at the last minute. Drew was great because it turned into the second Avenue deli on now on 33rd Street. And because I would have been moving my stuff around, I forgot to grab my cable, so it's literally just a recorder, and yentas and dishes clattering and all that. And I realized for a Drew Freedman interview, that's the perfect ambiance, you know, the sound of-- - He's brilliant. - Yeah, yeah. - He really is brilliant. - Yeah, we, I went to the gallery opening for the old Jewish comedians stuff at the Society of Illustrators. It may be the only party that ever blew up when someone said, "Oh my God, Abe Vigoda is here." And yeah. - Yeah, Drew has got his names that he's fixated on, and he sticks with them. - Yeah, I got to meet Robert Klein there. We just, the two of us actually walked around in the downstairs of the Society and looked at all the different Drew paintings, and Robert just started telling stories about each one of them, like seeing them in the 50s and 60s, and I thought, holy crap, this is one of those life experiences that you can't buy. You know, it's just this instance of, you know, an old comic telling stories, but even older comics. Which, you know, it's kind of great when you realize that whole chain of, again, as you're talking about, you know, the Elgonquin circle, and seeing people who, you know, connect throughout history like that. - Yeah. - So, but yeah, Drew is great for being a nexus for, you know. - He's just very fixated on that one. He's got, he's got an angle. It isn't even just old Jewish comedians. He's got an angle on a particular kind of, almost was from the 60s. - Yeah, yeah, the guys who never hit. - Oh, especially when we're doing the interview, and he says, oh, it was great. The time I talk with Sammy Patrillo, I'm staring at it. It's like the guy who looks like Jerry Lewis. Really? (laughing) That's for you. - That's his big day. He's full of names like that. He's dead. - He just play along at some time. - And then Shamp, he's really, really, really, really good at the Shamp. - Well, he actually says, you were a curly person first. - Oh, yes, I was, I still am a curly person, but around Drew on my Shamp. (laughing) - He actually emailed me that last week, 'cause I'd said, you know, she started out as curly, but now she's with Shamp, so this is all just a lie. - I'm all around Shamp, all the way with Drew, but I personally really love curly. I think he's just the most brilliant physical comedian I've ever seen. I just love everybody. I don't think I've ever seen it. I mean, the fact that he figured out spinning on one arm in a circle, that really, I mean, why did he think of that? To say nothing of how great his barking is. - Yeah. - And then of course, Shamp does a number of those things also, but I think curly done first, although I think maybe Drew would debate that with me. - We can have you both on. You know, we'll sit down and have a whole, you know, three students, I was a Marx Brothers guy, I was less of a three students person, so. - I love the Marx Brothers, I totally love the Marx Brothers. - For some reason, it was like, you know, Catholic and Protestant for us, except Jews in every direction. You were either Marx Brothers or three students growing up. - People keep saying that, I've heard this joke that Jay Leno did from a million years ago about women and the three students, and I just think, all right, Jay knew some women who, you know, it's that kind of thing they do with women, and women aren't funny. It means that like, when I always thought Mr. Hitchens was really brilliant and great, and then he said that thing, and then I just thought, well, all this is a portrait of the kind of women that Hitchens is hanging out with, is all really, that's the only thing this is. He liked a certain kind of woman where he sparkled and he was the funny one, and they would shut up and weren't funny, and therefore he drew the conclusion that. - Trust me, it wasn't just women. You know, he always wanted to be that, you know, but again, if we could at least classify half the-- - He forgot to write the piece that men aren't funny. He was just, he was a brilliant guy. It was very so disappointing to read a thing like that. You can't even imagine, I mean, not being a woman, but well, you can imagine, it's just imagine if you'd written it about Jews. You just go, oh, really? I mean, I run into that all the time. I just ran into something, people and their stupidness. It's somebody published something that I saw where was Kurt Vonnegut, who's another one of my big heroes, a really big hero, and he was using slurs having to do with, I think it was Asians. I hope, I don't think it was Jews. It might even have been Jews, but I don't wanna add that. I'm pretty sure it was Asians because it was an Asian woman who posted it. It was just so splitting to her, you know, it was misery. Just awful, I hate to find out that people I admire or schmuck. - Yeah, they have some horrendous-- - Just a big mistake to go on the record with an opinion about everything. - Yeah, I tend to be the most diplomatic. - There's really no point to that. - You know, I try to take it easy. I just, yeah, contemporary writing sucks. You know, I'll just throw it off as a quick, you know, dash or I don't have to actually, you know, name writers and then opinions. But yeah, generally, I try to not incite. Don't feed the trolls, I guess. That's really the, you know, don't get it all started. Painting? You study painting. - Yeah, I have a master's degree in art. Do you practice at all? Do you paint? - Well, what I've been doing anymore, I've been trying to get back into it, but you know what, it was such a calmer, more contemplative version of me when I was a painter because it's so much more meticulous in a different way. And it's the other side of the brain, too. I don't know if you've ever heard. I've read disputes that it's really not the right brain and the left brain the way we think it is. - But it's fine. - But it's not entirely not either. It's, they say it's both sides of the brain for everything. But traditionally, in the old model, it's right brain is-- - Creative side. - It's your creative side. And left brain is writing and calculation and analysis and stuff. And it's verbal and math skills. And it's, and I was way more right brain than, and I made a point of learning how to be way more left brain. And it's not that easy to jump back, you know? - Oh, I have that with my writing versus my, this business that I work at home now. So it's all day long, what I do. And it's, if I stay in business mode where I'm organizing and recruiting and doing all the business building stuff, it's not one of those things where I could say, okay, now I can stop and work on that short story. You know, it's just-- - No, but what I learned that I wrote a piece about it and they put it in the New York Times and it was very well liked, was about a year ago. I had a go on the hospital and have surgery. I had a double hip replacement if you can believe that. And I can believe it because I had it happen. And so I was briefly immobile. I'm great now. I mean, it's been, it was like a miracle that everything is great. And I can hike and I go to the gym and everything. It's great, but briefly I was pretty immobile. And so I wasn't, and I still get the newspaper delivered, although I'm really debating that I don't even want, even I don't want it anymore. I mean, they're making the online version look like I wanted to look lately. So I'm thinking, even I'm gonna knock it off pretty soon. But I had this little morning ritual where I'd get up and I'd go out to the driveway and I'd get the paper and then I'd come in and I'd drink coffee and I would read the paper. And I couldn't go out to the driveway anymore and I couldn't really go anywhere for a while. So I started trying to find ways to do things in bed without having to get up. And I started, I realized that if I start writing it, like 6 a.m., it's right brain. I have no scientific analysis to prove this, but it sure felt right brain for me. It felt like it just comes pouring out and you don't really sort of sensor or organize it. - No, you don't really need to, yeah. You can just kind of, you don't have the evil voices telling you that you are a shit. - Yeah, I got those 24 hours a day, but it might be schizophrenia. - No, you might think so, but weirdly one, you just wake up, it's actually pre-coffee. It's very, very easy for me not to write starting in the afternoon on. In fact, I don't even anymore, but right in the morning when I start, it comes just pouring out and it's just exactly like I want it to be. And I really think it's because when you wake up the analytical part of your brain sleeps for a while longer and all you've got is your right brain in the morning and it's that sleepy brain too. The brain you might think is useless. The brain that you might think needs a lot of coffee in order to wake up and write, just go with the sleepy brain and write. - I'll give that a shot. - It's fantastic. I mean, I've been doing it now since the last year, since I discovered that. And then you get the afternoon soft because I don't even try to write in the afternoon anymore unless I've got something that really a deadline and somebody gives me something back with that notes on it and so forth. And then that's a different kind of writing. That's much different. - Yeah, Dad, you just do it and you just have to do it. But I really have come to cherish and love writing in the morning and I was really a person who hated writing. Even though I've been doing it for a living, I really hated it and I really, really hated it. I used to have an image in my head of punching myself in the face in order to write. I would just imagine just punching and punching myself until I would sit down. And then I would finally just give in and I would do it and I'd write a sentence and then I'd look around on the internet and I don't have that impulse in the morning before I wake up. - Wow. - So I say go with the sleepy writing. - I will call it the Meryl Marco technique. I will give it a shot. Now what are you writing? What are you working on now? - Well, I actually, I have a bunch of pieces that I just turned in that are coming out pretty soon. I wrote a big piece for Vanity Fair that my friend Sam Simon, who's a co-creator of The Simpsons, who's dying of colon cancer. So I've been hanging with him and having a great time hanging with him and he's become this world-class philanthropist, this amazing philanthropist. - Matt Graining may be the highest net worth person I've ever body slammed by accident. We were both turning a corner at a comics festival in Brooklyn and as he fell to the ground, I realized, oh my God, you're Matt Graining, I'm sorry. And helped him up. So yeah, when you start to realize what the finances of The Simpsons are. - Well, Sam is giving all his money away to Adam, I'll ask you, all of it. And including when he dies, he's gonna give it all, he's got an amazing art collection, including The Thinker by Rodan and just this crazy stuff. And anyway, I've been writing about him. I just turned that in and that should be out pretty soon and I have a piece and you'll simple. And then I'm got a new novel that I'm writing. - Is it one that you want to talk about it all? - You know, I don't really like to talk about them. They're just, it's a question of whether you can pull it off. You know, it's really, you're making it up as you go along. There's nothing to talk about, it's not being done where I'm, it's not nonfiction, it's fiction. So. - There's not some ambitious theme that you're, you know, trying to capture 200 years of history. - I'm very ambitious if I were to phrase it and then I would want to stop writing it. - Well, I enjoyed the one novel that I've read of yours that goes down eyes up, which you've achieved two very difficult feats. First, you managed to get a male voice that I felt was pretty accurate and compelling. - Oh, thank you. - And second, you also managed to get a dog's voice or a number of dog voices in there. - Well, I'm pretty good at, I'm very good at dog voices and I fact check with Andy, the man I live with on the man. I did that a lot. I made him read it and I hadn't made him read it for Wussy, Wussy male by female writer voice. And he gave me a lot of notes on that. - Oh, it's one of those things, in any writing I've done, it's always the, and women, I sort of have to figure, think a little differently about this or that than I'm thinking about it and try to. - Well, I was trying to, with the male character, it's the only time I've written a thing with a male character but I was trying to understand the kind of guy that drives my friends crazy. - And you named him Gil, so I really appreciated that. - Oh, they're trying, okay. - Yeah, that was really, you know. I was actually, I was actually channeling this guy who works for me as a handyman. - Yeah, again, I have no construction ability at all so I didn't feel like I fell into too much that you weren't, you know, peering into my life when you wrote the books. And I'm a Greyhound guy as opposed to every other type of dog who shows up in that book. - Well, that's the reason that I said, just to this interview, I liked your pictures of your dogs. - They really are wonderful. It's, I would tell you to go with Greyhounds but they're so different than most other breeds. Just in terms of like what you can and can't do, like other dogs, it's the least. - Oh, you can let them off the leash, you can do this to that. - These days, they escape. - They can, they can run 35 miles an hour in about three steps, so it's really not good to, like the whole, I never liked the whole electric fence, you know, thing, but apparently they're completely useless with Greyhounds anyway, 'cause they will get past it before they feel the pain of-- - Wow. - If they see something. - Wow. - I will tell the embarrassing story of losing one of my dogs for a brief moment, walking down a hill. We live out in the woods and wilds in Northern New Jersey, walking downhill with one of the Greyhounds. It's rainy, somehow the leash is no longer in my hand. My dog is already 30 feet ahead and just over a guardrail on the edge of the woods is a deer and the deer starts running. I can't even like run because this happened once before or one of them took off after a deer and I realized that the two fastest mammals in North America I'm not the third and I'm really no chance of catching them. All I can do is shout and hope the thing stops. In this instance, they both took off, it was on the ridge and a guardrail was separating the two animals. And the deer and my Greyhound both ran about 70 feet before the deer veered downhill into the woods and my dog just stopped and turned around and came trotting back. And I realized I don't think he was trying to catch the deer. I think he was trying to race the deer. He just wanted to run along, so he didn't try to get over the guardrail and get to him. He just wanted to run next to something that could run as fast as him. And that's when you realize, yeah, they have a different set of priorities depending on what sort of dog they are. - That's quite one, the leash, I mean. - That one has a bit more of a prey drive than the other one. - Yeah, the prey drive is really, makes walking a dog really miserable. The first one we got initially, we walked past a rabbit once. I saw it and he didn't. And I said, "Really?" 'Cause this was your one job was chasing down the rabbit and going, he just walked right by. And I thought, you know, if I was a professional athlete and that was my whole life, I probably wouldn't be picking up the basketball again afterwards once I was retired. I think he was just, "Dude, I'm in the suburbs now. I'm finished with chasing the rabbits." - How long did they race for you, though? - One did about a year and just never won anything and most of his race notes were collided on first turn, which once we started going on Greyhound hikes, we realized, yeah, no, he just bumps other dogs and knocks into them while we're walking down these narrow trails. And that's exactly what he was doing, except 30 miles an hour running around the track. The other one did a little bit longer, but they shut down racing in his state, so they had to find home for all the dogs. - And they're racing such as brutal. - Yeah, it's one of those things where a little torn about it, just that they don't mistreat them mistreat them. Like, they don't abuse them, you know, they only feed twice. - You sure about that? - They love people. - 'Cause they sure mistreat the horses. - Yeah, with the dogs, I think they have to treat them well enough that they're not gonna hide from their trainers. Like, they still, you know, walk alongside a person to the track. - They love 'em and stuff. - They put 'em on cocaine sometimes. In some states, they've been busted for that, which I guess helps with their weight and their confidence. I don't know if it helps their confidence. But when we got them, you know, they love people. They, the moment they handed me the leash, the first one just leaned into me to the point of almost knocking me over and they said, "Oh, he's a real people person." And so that was our, it's not like Michael Vick dogs, where, you know, they cowered from human beings and there were certain ones you could not get out. - So yeah, it's, the conditions aren't, you know, what we would want, but, you know, - Because Sam tells the story, Sam Simon. - Yeah. - Tells the story of, he was, he directed a lot of episodes of The Drew Carey Show before he got very sick. And there was some episode having to do with Greyhound racing and he wanted, because he's a big Peter guy, he wanted them to reorganize the storyline so that they wasn't letting Greyhound racing appeared great. So they wouldn't do that. So he decided to give all the money that he, his money to animal charities that had, for that, that have done paid for doing that episode. And there was, and he, so he signed over the money from that episode and all future rerun money from that episode to Peter. And Peter was gonna put him on the cover of their magazine with a bunch of Greyhounds. And the track called up and said, if you put, if you put those Greyhounds on the cover of Peter magazine, we're gonna kill those dogs. And that was the end of his... - Yes, you see, some states it's illegal. Like you have to get, in order to put down a Greyhound from a track, you need like three different doctors' approvals, which I'm sure that stuff can be greased also, but some of them try to treat them humanely, as best you can given what they're trying to do with the dogs. But yeah, the rescue group that we have, they just got some over from Europe. Apparently in Spain, it's still a big thing, and they've actually brought a bunch over that they weren't gonna be able to adopt out there. They really are the most wonderful dogs. I mean, they're couch potatoes. They'll sleep for like 18 hours a day, but they're also just so stupidly affectionate. They're adorable. It's one of those things, just coming home and having those two guys standing at the top of the stairs, just wagging like maniacs. It's like, oh, go ahead. - We've got one like that. The other one, we have a problem daughter and a prodigal son that we just got. We've only had them maybe five months, four or five months, 'cause everybody died around here. We had a lot of dogs that died the last couple years. And, but Wally came out and just, it was like a masterclass on how to audition to get adopted, he came out just hugging. And then all right, you and he's been hugging ever since. He's just like the best possible dog. He can't imagine how he wound up in a kill shelter. He just, and then his sister, they get a long break, but she's kind of skitzy. - That's one of those things where you realize there's no control group, you know, balancing thing that, you know, this work, this time, therefore this will work every time, you know, trying to keep them. - Yeah, no two dogs that I've had so far have reminded me that much of each other. They've all been radically different. - Yeah, that was our fear. Two grays are both good, but yeah, one of them is a lot dumber than the other. And like one of them has figured out how to balance so that his leash will get out from under his paw if it's caught where the other one just, you know, just doesn't know what to do. - Yeah, those are one of the marks of how smart I've always been gauging is whether they can unwrap around a pole, they go and they're just trapped behind a pole, but there's nothing holding them anywhere and they can't just walk back and give, rewind the pole and then some do. You know, there are those that do and those that don't. - And so all that preparation really helped you for writing in Dog Voice? - Yeah, well, I've been hanging out with dogs for so long that it's very, very easy and fun for me to imagine. It's a creative exercise I do all the time of what do they think I'm doing. - Yeah, how would they perceive human activity? - Yeah, that's partly what I love about hanging out with the members of another species is just, I can see what that they're accepting what I'm doing, but what do they think it is? And then that's really funny to imagine because it can't possibly be what it really is. I mean, I like posing questions in a theoretical sense in my head to what do I do for a living? And then having them explain it, you know, since it's a question that would never occur to them but also they would have absolutely no way of comprehending or else they maybe do comprehend it, who knows? - And the smarter they will be. - But mostly people don't write dogs like that. There are a few that do, but mostly they write them like they are just human intelligence. I prefer the idea that they have their own motives for everything and their own interests. And they're just by accident sitting on a furniture. - I love you, but it's really for the treats, you know, that there's a certain-- - Yeah. - Yeah. They want the cookies, they want the biscuits. That's, you know, they do love us, but you know, they're a version of what that means. It's a lot different than ours. It's one of those things where I try and early on there was the, well, I'm gonna alternate which one I take out first when I do them individually and then I realize, no, no, the alpha thing means Rufus always goes out first, otherwise he gets very angry that I took Otis out before him and-- - Yeah, and hit that Otis will pay. - Yeah, yeah, or in our case, the sofa, you know, he decided to stop and pee downstairs before it's like, okay, okay, from now on, you go out first, you just made your point, you are going to be the number one dog. - Well, the female that we've got right now is that she's a young German shepherd, she's a German shepherd and mix. I never get purebreds unless I just get mutts, but she's the only dog I've ever had. I think she must have been feral for a pretty long time. When we first got her, she didn't understand the idea of treats at all. And she didn't have any attention spent to actually look at you, you couldn't, I couldn't teach her to sit without a dog trainer. The dog trainer had it in order to teach her to sit and be interested, she didn't know about treats and she couldn't be reinforced by them. And the dog trainer, to get her attention to even begin how to do, you know, there was no way to get her to focus on you, so she must have just been feral and just was-- - Or dumb. Our dumb one, trust me, if you have a treat in your hand and you close your hand around it, he'll just walk away. The other one, you know, starts a nosing 'cause he knows it's in there. We joke, have you ever seen the movie "Mellers Crossing", "Cohen Brothers" gangster movie? - No. - Oh, this wonderful moment where John Polito is, he's got his young son there, he's this Italian mobster. But it's a penny in one hand and, you know, he moves around, which hand is the penny in? And the kid taps the wrong hand. And try again, kid, kid taps the same hand. He's like, "Yeah, a shiny penny, kid, here you go." Just gives him the penny from the other hand. We basically, whenever we try this with Otis, it's always shiny penny, you know, he just, you know, looks for us, the treat's gone. Oh, I'll leave. - Did you see that? There's a video on YouTube that you should look at, where it's, I don't know what country they're from, it seems sort of Scandinavian, maybe it's a magician doing a magic trick for dogs. With about 12 different dogs in it, it's really great. They, all of them, had the same reaction, but it was one of these-- - Folsa, oh, it's breaking it up and disappearing it. - Yeah, and it's fantastic, you should go looking for it. - Yeah, so one of ours does not take that lying down. He just, no, no, there was a treat there. I know there's still a treat somewhere. - Well, all of them do. I was surprised, noted that-- - Otis would have walked off. He just would have, I guess it's gone, you know, just trot it away, and that's why he's the skinnier of the two dogs, I guess. But you mentioned graphic novels earlier, you-- - Well, that's what I was gonna say. You asked me if I'd paint or anything. You know what I've been doing, yes, I've been keeping a graphic novel instead of a diary. - Have you? Is this something you're looking to publish? - I don't think so, I'm doing it without thought that I will overpublish it, but it gives, I try to draw every day. - Have you seen Mimi Pons? - Yeah, I looked it. - Oh, that's right, you did, done. - I interviewed her a few weeks ago. - Very good, it was really, really good, I liked it. - But she was coming from, you know, the arts and doing cartoons all these years. - Yeah. - But is that something you would think about? - Well, I had to teach myself to cartoon, because what I used to do was super realistic. - Oh yeah, it's a very different set of skills. - So, I had to teach myself what I could buy as acceptable. I used to spend forever and ever and ever and ever getting something right. You have to go a whole other way with it. You know, it's more about getting it right on the level of cartoons. - Yeah, even within Mimi's book, you could see early stuff as a level of finish early on that you could tell it's sort of the, I didn't need to keep doing it this exactingly. I can be a little looser, you know, as the drawing goes. - I never really thought about it. - Yeah, it's just like a lifetime of comics geekery. You could see it a little bit, but it's still, it's fantastic work. It's not that she's cutting the quality of it. It's just that you start to find, you know, a looser style, but you haven't thought of adapting your work. What sort of-- - Oh, no, I actually-- - Or finishing it. - I had, you know what, I once talked to a magazine piece that had hired me until letting me do it as a comic strip, and then that was before I taught myself how to cartoon. I did so many sketches for the first panel. I was doing it for weeks. I found out that I was so perfectionistic in art in a way that I'm not in writing. - Yeah. - And I couldn't, and I backed out of it. I didn't do it, so I've been doing it every night for a couple of years here now, so I have a cartoon style that I don't have. You know, but I'm just doing it for me. - Yeah, who are they? - I have some fantastic cool color markers that I bought at the Art Supply store. I still have a big Art Supply Jones. - Yeah. - Really-- - Oh, there's always that sense of potential, like when you just see that stuff, and I could make art. I'm gonna go pick up some of these things and, you know-- - I just love a lot of all the different colors that they sell stuff in. - Yeah, are there particular cartoonists who style, who did you read? - I've read everybody. We have a huge library of graphic stuff. Yes, I guess my favorite would be Mr. Klaus. Is that how you say his name? - Yeah, it's Klaus. - Yeah. - Yeah, I think he's the most brilliant portrayer of specific gesture and facial expression. My God, he gets it so right when he gets it. It's amazing, it's just, he's in a class by himself. Of course, Mr. Friedman is in a different class by himself, Mr. Friedman isn't even a cartoonist, so much as he's Vermeer or something, you know? - The Vermeer of the Borscht belt was how he was-- - Yeah, you know, he doesn't even look like cartoons to me. I mean, he's gotten so realistic. - Well, those early days with his brother when they got strips together. - Well, when he was stippling, I mean-- - Yeah, when he had the, I used to call the Wall Street Journal headshots the Drew Friedmanizer, you know, those little head cuts that they used. - He told me that part of the reason he stopped doing that is that his wife, Kathy, just couldn't stand to hear him making those noises with a pen. - I figure it's a lot faster working with the, it was one thing I met one of the other cartoonists. I interviewed the Pulitzer winner in political cartooning a year or so ago, Matt Worker. I mentioned to him that I was gonna interview Drew. He's like, find out how he's so productive. I don't understand. - He's fast, man, he is fast. He's always got things in the works. - And it turns out those old Jewish comedians pictures are maybe the originals might be four or five inches. - Yeah, they're little. - Yeah, they're not these giant size things. - And they blow up amazingly well. I have a couple of his pieces here. Yeah, that was one of those realizations that-- - His comic book guys, so are the best thing he's ever done. I mean, he did a great job with comedians. He does a great job with everything anybody asked him to do. But the actual comic strip artists, I think, are a class beyond because those are guys who don't have anything physically that interesting about them, and he's got them looking fascinating. And you know, they look like businessmen. They look like a guy who works at the Bank and a guy. - As I say, it's the old Jewish men, but in a different world that like Jack Kirby and guys like that-- - Yeah, those are brilliant, fantastic. Yeah, they look like white men, just some white men. But he's got all the stuff in their faces that shows you what they are all the way through, you know? He really, really gets the little facial expression right too. Klaus does a whole other thing. Klaus gets the greatest weird people making just the perfect face. He's very brilliant, that guy. - Another artist? - I guess those are my-- - Those are the two big ones. - Those would be the two that come to mind. Let me see who else. Well, we've got all of that stuff here. You know, the guy who does Jimmy Corrigan-- - Chris Ware. - Mr. Ware. - He's amazing. I already praised Mimi. - Yeah, I was hoping to get home. - Oh, my very, very favorite of all, of all people of all things is Linda Berry. - Oh, I noticed you had some art of hers. - I have a lot of hers. She was calling it for cheap, I had Etsy, 50 bucks for drawings and stuff. - Holy crap. - I bought a whole bunch of her drawings. Yeah, I took her writing some in our X number of, like maybe two, three years ago, this friend of mine who's a screenwriter and a writer, TV writer, said, "Oh, you got to take it." It's, the couple of them said, "You really have to take it, it's so amazing." And I went for that recommendation, and I also really loved her, and it was a really good class, but her books, everything about all of her books is brilliant in a way that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I mean, I think she's amazing. She's completely brilliant. - Right, yeah. So, again, it's nice to have different forms to work in, but how different do you find that distilling things and intercomers? - I only wish I were somebody who did that instead of what I do. That would be so much more rewarding and fun, I would think, but I, you know, I haven't got a foot in that door, and I don't even know if I would have the patience to sit and-- - I think I will-- - I know some comics people wouldn't get you set up, but I know it's a different world to walk into at this point. - Yeah, I'm not really, you know, just the amount of gesture and detail and stuff each day, and stuff each panel has to have in it looks intimidating to me. I wonder if I have the patience to do it. - Understood. This is a horrible way to end a conversation, but you're Obit someday. Do you have a fear of it saying the creator of stupid pet tricks? - Yeah, I think it probably will, and I will really hate that. I just hope that the Obit writer knows that and feels bad. - What's the alternative? What would you want your-- You won't be around for it. - I don't know, I don't have a buzzword for myself. I don't have a catchphrase from myself or anything, but I really don't consider having thought of the idea for stupid pet tricks to be the hallmark of what I'm capable of. I mean, I was just trying to fill up a few minutes of TV with that. Was a show that we had to fill up all day, every day we had to fill up the same amount as we did the next day, and it was a thing you could do more of, and that's the extent to which I committed, I actually never even booked stupid pet tricks. That wasn't people saying, "Oh, you wrote stupid pet tricks." I didn't write stupid pet tricks, all I did was had that idea that we put an ad in the paper, and then the interns booked stupid pet tricks. It was people came with their bets and we picked the good ones, and then they went on TV. There's no writing of stupid pet tricks. It's just like, it's a horrible thorn in my side, and I will really have to come back from the dead and kill people after that, I think, when that's my Obit. - I understood. It will be as though I lived in vain. I hope the Obit writer knows that. - Lecture will tell the times after this. And you're happy? You're a happy person? - Yeah, I actually am a happy person. I have a very far-reaching definition of happy, which goes all the way from actual happy to nothing horrible is happening happy, which is a pretty good definition of happy is when the absence of something awful is a pretty good definition of happy. I'm always happy if I have things to work on. I really like working. - Good. Meryl Marko, thank you so much for coming on The Virtual Memory Show. - Well, thank you for having me. ♪ You'll make me best ♪ ♪ You'll make me best ♪ ♪ You'll make me best ♪ ♪ You'll make me best ♪ ♪ You'll make me best ♪ - And that was Meryl Marko. You can find out all about Meryl's work and her blog and her videos and photography and her upcoming articles and books, all at her website, MerylMarko.com. I'm gonna spell that out for you because I'm nice. M-E-R-R-I-L-L-M-A-R-K-O-E.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at Meryl Marko. Meryl's published eight novels and collections of essays, and I can personally attest that nose-down eyes up her 2008 novel about a handyman named Gil is a hoot, and I've got a few more of her books on my shelf that I'm planning to get to. So that's it for this week's virtual memories show. I'll be back next Tuesday with a conversation with David Beyerwald, who was once one half of the band David and David, and has gone out to have a really interesting musical career since his gold record days in the 1980s. I wish I could tell you even half of the stuff we talked about when the mics were off. It was quite a meeting. In the meantime, please hit up our websites VMSPod.com or chimeraobscura.com/vm to make a donation to this ad-free podcast. You can find past episodes there and get an our weekly email list. And if you've got ideas for guests, drop me a line at groth@chymeraobscura.com or through VMSPod on Twitter or at our Facebook page, Facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow. And do me a favor. Go to the iTunes Store, look up the virtual memories show, and leave a review and rating there. More people do that. Better the chances will get featured when somebody searches for stupid pet tricks. Until next time, I am Gil Roth, and you are awesome. Keep it that way. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) You