Interview: Harry Crews

A 2009 interview with the writer, who died Wednesday at age 76:

“My students are all around the country. All that shit that’s on the, whatever you call it, the internet or something? Google or something? I don’t have it on my computer.

That’s probably a blessing.

“Well, I do have it, but I just don’t pull it up. But there’s a ton of shit about me on there. There’s a boy named Damon Sauve in San Francisco. He’s a fine writer. He put all that shit on, I guess it’s called a website? I know very little about computers. I just do the best I can and leave all that shit alone. I write in longhand, I write on a typewriter, I write on a computer, I’d write with charcoal if it would make me write better. I don’t care what it is as long as it gets the words down. I only want about 500 words a day. Five hundred words a day is just wonderful if you can get that many, but you usually can’t—not that you can keep anyway.”

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Jan 1, 2009
Length: 16 minutes (4,025 words)

Steve Gruberg and the ‘Grube Tube’

Memories of an early pioneer in New York public access television:

“By all accounts, public access television is dead, or dying, or just living an anonymous existence in the lesser-trolled channels of cable. But despite its decrepit state, I became mildly obsessed with, and then fully addicted to, The Grube Tube—a live talk show on Time Warner Cable New York’s channel 35. The show followed a simple and well-known format: a number was displayed on the bottom of the screen, and callers were instructed to dial in. The host answered these calls from a landline phone on his desk. The caller, who was now being broadcast live on air, could say anything he or she pleased. It was the host’s decision to converse with said caller or hang up. That host was Steve Gruberg. The callers were a mix of eccentric Manhattanites, adolescents with an unusual fondness for the c-word, and longtime viewers who refused to let the program lose relevance. I fell somewhere in between.”

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Mar 26, 2012
Length: 8 minutes (2,045 words)

Paintballing with Hezbollah

Four Western journalists and a former Army Ranger-turned-counterinsurgency expert arrange a paintball game with members of the Shiite militant group, with the hopes of learning more about what motivates them:

“It took nearly a full year to pull together this game, and all along I’d been convinced that things would fall apart at the last minute. Fraternizing with Westerners is not the sort of thing Hezbollah top brass allows, so to arrange the match I’d relied on a man we’ll call Ali, one of my lower-level contacts within the group.

“Ali had sworn that he’d deliver honest-to-God trained fighters for an evening of paintball, but when the four-man Hezbollah team first walked into the building, I was dubious. In the Dahiyah, the southern suburbs of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah, every macho teenager and his little brother consider themselves essential members of ‘the Resistance.’ And one of the fighters—a tall, lanky, 20-something with a scruffy beard and the spiked-and-gelled hairdo favored by secular Beirut kids—seems like a wannabe. Especially after he introduces himself as Coco.”

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Mar 23, 2012
Length: 19 minutes (4,871 words)

The Sound of All Girls Screaming

[Fiction] [Not-single page] Life as a soldier in the Israeli Defense Force, and a trip to the tear-gas tent:

“‘Do you love the army?’ my commander asks.

“‘Yes and no, I mean I definitely believe that it is important in a country like ours to serve in the army, but I hope for peace, and on a personal level, of course, boot camp presents its own hardships, and also—’

“‘Enough,’ my boot-camp commander says.

“‘Are you afraid to die?’ she asks. She skips two questions. She knows I am trouble, although I have barely caused any yet. Maybe trouble isn’t something you do, it’s something you are.”

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Nov 2, 2011
Length: 13 minutes (3,276 words)

Peeling Oniontown

[Not single-page] A trip to a mysterious, reclusive community in New York that’s been derided by neighboring residents for decades:

“For most of its history, the residents of surrounding areas quietly judged the Oniontowners but left them alone up on the mountain. ‘Most locals know there’s no point in going up there,’ a state police investigator told me. But recently, the demographics of the region have been changing. New York City homebuyers have plowed through Westchester and Putnam into traditionally working-class Dutchess County, ever in pursuit of cheaper, more bucolic upstate idylls. And in the past few years, suburban youth have taken to venturing up to gawk at the supposedly inbred hillbillies who’ve been popularized by urban myth. In early 2008, a shaky video called ‘Oniontown Adventures’ appeared on YouTube. In it, three young jokers drive up a dirt road in an SUV at dusk, pretending like they’re reenacting a scene from Deliverance while commenting on the ‘little inbred hick village.'”

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Jan 20, 2012
Length: 24 minutes (6,146 words)

George Lois on Advertising and the Death of the Magazine Cover

“[Magazine covers] are very carefully researched. They test them: ‘Do you like this line better than this one?’ If you have to depend on blurbs to have people buy your magazine then you’ve got a piece of shit! You don’t have a brand! You don’t design a magazine for your audience; you create a great magazine for yourself. I’ve had this discussion with editors like Graydon Carter. He could do great Vanity Fair covers. Graydon said, ‘We have very intelligent readers.’ And I said, ‘Of course you have very intelligent readers, and you insult them with every cover!'”

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Jan 14, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,975 words)

Interview: Berkeley Breathed

I drew what seemed amusing to me. That was the extent of my thoughtfulness when it came to designing the Bloom County world. As with most cartoonists, a comic strip is an unsavory peek into the head of its maker. Having said that, I have no inkling as to the inside of Jim Davis’s head from a reading of Garfield. It was the classic corporate invention—drawn by a staff—which made it fun to skewer. It was there to sell shit.

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Jan 7, 2010
Length: 9 minutes (2,482 words)