Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 333: Malaka Gharib
286 Plays2 years ago
Malaka Gharib (@malakagharib on IG) is a cartoonist and author of the graphic memoir It Won't Always Be Like This (Ten Speed Press).
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Social: @CNFPod
Show notes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
N/A Beer discount: athleticbrewing.com, promo code BRENDANO20
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Brand Endorsement
00:00:01
Speaker
Oh hey CNFers, many of you know I like to crack open a beer on this pod sometimes. Sometimes it contains alcohol. Sometimes it's a near beer. I've been selected as a brand ambassador for athletic brewing.
00:00:16
Speaker
I just sent them a pitch. I like what they do. I like the beer and I figured, why not throw my hat into the ring? And they plucked me out of the slush pile. Anyway, they're a brewery that makes my favorite non-alcoholic beer. Shout out to Free Wave, their hazy IPA. And if you use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get 20% off your first order.
00:00:39
Speaker
can head to athleticbrewing.com and order yourself the best non-alcoholic beer I think you'll ever drink. I mean it. Also, I don't get any money. I get points towards flair and beer, but no money. Check it out. I liked it. Well, you liked it. Why? I hated it. Well, why did you hate it? I just didn't like it. Well, what didn't you like about it? I don't know. You know what I mean?
00:01:11
Speaker
That is my guest today.
Guest Introduction: Malika Garib's Work and Book
00:01:14
Speaker
Our guest, Malika Garib. Malika is so cool and what a delight to speak with. She works for NPR Science Desk, but odds are you're familiar with her because of her cartooning. She's prolific on Instagram with her cartoons.
00:01:31
Speaker
uh something this is something she wants to do more of and we'll get into that in the show her cartoons have appeared in the new yorker la times in the believer i mean a couple of rags am i right she's the author of the graphic memoir i was their american dream which is named a best book of 2019 by like a billion places including the washington post another rag
00:01:57
Speaker
Has anyone heard of these publications? Her latest book is It Won't Always Be Like This, a graphic memoir. It's a touching memoir, so specific to her summer trips to visit her father and stepmother and steps and siblings as it would come to be in Egypt. Memoirs are supposed to be specific, not sprawling autobiography, but something really granular.
00:02:23
Speaker
And this drills down on those awkward adolescent years and how Malika began to find her footing in the world, while also illustrating the Arab family from the inside out, namely her father and Hala, her stepmother.
Admiration for Comics and Graphic Memoirs
00:02:39
Speaker
Some of you know I like to post comics and zines and then I delete them because I'm a shithead But when I see graphic memoirs, I'm just like man. I dig that form. I love comics. I love one panel comics I love the economy of the storytelling. It's more immersive to me. It's very immersive
00:02:58
Speaker
Malika, she posts a lot of zines and little comics that she just kind of scribbles off and posts them. It's very entertaining. She's got a great newsletter also about beautiful things that she likes to link up to. Kind of like my rage against the algorithm newsletter. Anyway, we'll get to that.
00:03:17
Speaker
Anyway, my drawings are largely ripoffs of Brian Ray, so I have a lot of discovery when it comes to my own cartooning. Oh, by the way, I'm Brendan O'Mara, and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. And sometimes the art and craft of telling true stories involves graphic memoirs like Kristen Ratky's, CQ, Malika's book, Meechie Ng's, Barely Functional Adult, awesome stuff.
Promotion: 'Rage Against the Algorithm' Newsletter
00:03:47
Speaker
Hey, show notes to this episode and a billion others are at BrendanOmero.com. There, you can also sign up to my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. Yeah, that one. I mentioned it earlier, like 20 seconds ago. This is where it's at CNFers. I'm not one to hang out on social media, but I am one to put a lot of effort.
00:04:06
Speaker
into my kick-ass monthly newsletter that entertains, gives you value, and sticks it to the algorithm. Sticks it right up the algorithm's keister. If that's your thing, sign up. Been doing it for a lot of years, first of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it. All right, my parting shot at the end of this episode will deal with the Patreon jam, but for now, this is a fun one. Please enjoy my conversation with Malika. Go read.
Malika's Zine-Making Process and Ethos
00:04:46
Speaker
I'm a big aficionado of sorts of zines and stuff like that. So I've always plugged into your zines on Instagram or whatever. And so it's really cool to see this monster zine that you were able to do in a graphic memoir.
00:05:01
Speaker
That's exactly how I see the graphic novels. I just see them as monster zines. I didn't know how to create anything longer than like 25 pages. Sorry, 24. Actually, we have to think in terms of zine pages in multiples of four. A 32-page zine. I haven't done anything longer than that, so I just basically strung the chapters together as if they were like nine individual zines. What's your favorite zine format?
00:05:31
Speaker
Oh, that's a really great question. You know, I've tried many zine formats over the years. When I was in high school, my uncle was a doctor and had a copy machine in his practice. And I would just print out zines there. So in that age, I loved just printing out two sheets of paper that were printed back to back and then folding them together.
00:05:54
Speaker
And that was my little, I think that was like a 16 page zine, maybe like, I don't know, eight page zine. And I like to make mini zines out of one sheet of paper.
00:06:04
Speaker
And sometimes if I get really fancy, I'll go and get it professionally printed at my local Kinko's and get it bound together, which is very, very fancy in the world of zines. But I think my favorite type of zine is like get it done, get it done now and make it easy. So I love any kind of zine that I can just, if I have access to a copy machine, that kind of zine that I could make on the fly is my favorite type. Messing with like a printer and doing anything more professional than that just feels
00:06:33
Speaker
less punk for some reason. Yeah, I totally get that. I love how you make a lot of your zines almost like a square, almost the size of a postage stamp. A little bit bigger than that, but they're so just tiny. Tiny. I love that, and you just hold that up. It's just such a cool thing and a cool little package to just tell a micro story or to celebrate, I don't know, just something cool you did or something cool you saw in a day. It doesn't have to be complicated.
00:07:02
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. And I think what I wanted to do, I was making a lot of mini zines, you know, in my thirties. I think I went to challenge the format of what a zine is supposed to represent, right? Like a zine is supposed to represent like somebody's world or a magazine. Like you open up the pages and it's like somebody's grand old world, like in just the confines of these pages.
00:07:26
Speaker
like you could learn all about the Riot Girl movement in just like, you know, eight pages of computer paper that was printed. So I wanted to challenge that by making the zines as tiny as possible and see how much information I could pack into such a tiny space and
00:07:42
Speaker
see if I could say something truly profound in that short amount of space with few words, few illustrations and few pages. And I love the challenge of that. It always felt like playing Tetris with words or like almost like writing poetry. There's something very poetic about packing all that information into tiny, tiny zine.
Creative vs Commercial: The Monetization Dilemma
00:08:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah and there's I think in this day and age of social media too like when you do something or take on a creative project even if it's just this little zine I think a lot of people get stuck on this whole idea of like if I do something creative like I need to somehow monetize this or have an Etsy shop.
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, a lot of my own inclinations are to similarly like, oh, I could have printed this out and sold it at a zine fest, or I could sell this on my Instagram for 15 bucks if they buy 10. And I always have that voice in me saying that. But I always tell myself, I don't have time for that. I'm not going to sit around and write a bunch of addresses on postcards and do the postage thing. I'm not going to do that. And the other thing I think is that sometimes,
00:08:50
Speaker
You know, there was a period in my 30s where I was just basically making the zine then putting them
00:08:56
Speaker
out in the world for anybody to take. So I used to write these like letters or like these tiny, tiny letters in envelopes or like tiny zines, and I would leave them on the bus. Because the point for me in making these like small tiny art installations was to like get the feeling out, you know, keep some of it with photos on Instagram, but then also like let it go and give it away to somebody else, some stranger who might pick it up and then relate to it later on. So yeah, for a series of several months,
00:09:26
Speaker
I did that. I just would leave the zine wherever I made it. And I tried to make the zine in like five minutes. And I was very intentional, actually, about making the zine look as crappy as possible. Because similarly, I want to make it look
00:09:39
Speaker
Everything is so perfect on Instagram, and I think that the zine ethos is to have it a little bit rough around the edges, punk. It's on the fly, and I wanted to make sure that ethos never got disrupted. If you're doing a little eight-page zine, which is one you can easily do with one sheet of paper, folding it and cutting it a certain way,
00:10:02
Speaker
Do you find yourself to make sure that you're able to get your point across in the eight pages? Do you kind of like do a rough outline or some sort of a sketch that way you don't go along and you kind of like run out of pages? You're like, ah, damn it. I forgot. I ran out of space. Yeah, absolutely.
Balancing NPR Job and Creative Pursuits
00:10:18
Speaker
I often find that like it takes like many, many sometimes it takes days. I think about an idea of what I want to say. Maybe it's like I saw this woman who I felt sorry for at the airport and
00:10:31
Speaker
I thought she was lonely, but then she got a phone call from her family and they were all greeting her happy birthday. And she was basically flying to go and see her family.
00:10:41
Speaker
And I felt that, oh, like my assumption about this poor old woman was wrong. She was actually very much loved and I shouldn't have assumed that about her. So for example, I'll be thinking of a story like that for days and then I'll be like sort of composing the pages in my mind. And then I'll say like, all right, I'm ready to put it down to paper. And sometimes I'll write, I'll jot little notes to myself about the way that I want to phrase things in my notebook.
00:11:09
Speaker
And then when it comes to making the scene, then I'll just go ahead and pump out all those ideas in five minutes or in 10 minutes and just get it done. In your author bio at the back of the book, it says, by day, you work as an editor on NPR's science desk. So we can unpack that a little bit as working around day jobs. But I have to ask, what are you by night?
00:11:34
Speaker
Oh, what am I by night? I am a zenster, an artist, a cartoonist. Recently, I've been very interested in my newsletter and curating these like, links of things that I find very beautiful. And I'm actually doing my first collage performance, I'm calling it of the newsletter, in which I'm like presenting some of the things that I
00:12:00
Speaker
in like a 15 minute presentation with sound and lights and audio. So I think that'll be really interesting. So yeah, I guess I see myself as an artist the rest of the time. I've always been inspired by the sticker that I saw in 2008, living in Washington DC. The sticker said, I hate my nine to five. And it always like helped me remember that like, you're you.
00:12:28
Speaker
in the other parts of the day and I shouldn't, that's all a good time to like, I should take advantage of that time to be and express myself and like satisfy all the things that I want to do in that remaining time. I don't, not saying that I hate my nine to five, I love my nine to five, but like, I love my other times outside of it too when I can do whatever else I want.
00:12:49
Speaker
Yeah, it can be challenging to have or to live a creative life and try to have and put pressure on yourself to have it be like the sole sustenance of what you do. But, you know, you've got your gig as a journalist and then your gig as an artist. And so in what ways have you been able to reconcile the two? So like one sort of subsidizes the other and finding the way to do your cartooning and everything else.
00:13:17
Speaker
in the cracks of your life around your day job? These are very good questions. And you're a very good interviewer. Thank you. It means a lot from someone who works with NPR. Yeah, I sit and listen to these interviews all the time for my day job. So yes, you're very good. I would say that there is probably a tipping point
00:13:42
Speaker
that will happen someday where, I mean, oh gosh, what a hard question. I would say that for now, like my day job is still giving me, like it's like still putting the bread on the table, right? Like, but I want to get my creative work at a point where I can like have that be more of my
00:14:01
Speaker
my work and help pay more of the bills so that I can eventually do more of my creative work. But I'm not quite there yet. And I don't know how to like, I can't do it all. I can't do it all, but I can do it a little bit at a time and eventually do all the things that I want to do, just not all at the same time.
00:14:23
Speaker
I guess to answer your question, I'm sort of like thinking through as I'm talking. I don't think it's possible to manage the creative life that I want while having a day job because the day job requires and demands so much of my attention and energy. And so does my creative life. And it's just as important to me as my day job. I would like to put more energy into my creative life except
00:14:50
Speaker
I am only one person and I can't do it all. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah.
00:14:55
Speaker
it's very hard you have to see it almost like as like this sliding scale like if you can pick up enough cartooning work that replaces like a certain chunk of that steady income it's like then you can start scaling back from that but it can be really hard because at some point you have to ramp up the hustle at some point or another and it's just there's only so many hours and there's only so much bandwidth and it can just
00:15:21
Speaker
It can just be really, really challenging just to find that time. But it's a hard balance. A lot of people are juggling that. They want their creative stuff to be the thing that mainly sustains them. But it can be really hard to find the energy and the time to really commit to it in a way that feels. That's right. Well, I will say that NPR has been really good about letting me do my cartoonings and cartooning and comics at NPR.
Comics and Zines for NPR: Climate Change Project
00:15:49
Speaker
They've given me the opportunity to make zines and comics for them, and they've been really open to like inviting me to, I think I'm making like a children's zine, a zine for children around climate change in the fall with NPR.
00:16:05
Speaker
And I just think it's going to be really cool. And I'm very, very happy that they were so open to letting me do. I was like, we're going to make a scene. And it's going to be printable. And we're going to make it available on PDFs online. And it's going to be so great.
00:16:21
Speaker
they were on board with it. So I was like, okay, this is good. This is a really good sign. I hope that they keep inviting me to do this stuff. For you, like what makes for a skilled interviewer and what are some things that you notice that other people, a lot of other interviewers are kind of like, they don't quite get correct.
00:16:39
Speaker
Yeah, I do a lot of interviews. I do a lot of print interviews for NPR's website. I recently interviewed a heavy metal vocalist from Botswana named Vulture. And I interviewed an Oxford philosopher who thinks about the very, very far future. And I'm talking about trillions of years into the future.
00:17:04
Speaker
And so I interview lots of kinds of different people. And I also advise, as an editor, others on how to interview and how to get the best interview for a story. And I think that you want to always try to give. This is a word that I made up in my head. You always want the interviewee to give wet answers. And what I mean by wet, I was explaining this to another colleague today.
00:17:33
Speaker
You can't let them speak in generalities, you can't let them get away with speaking in generalities, and you can't let them talk in exposition. You have to have them give examples at every turn because it brings an otherwise dry interview to life.
00:17:50
Speaker
It makes, it stimulates the imagination to think about, you know, color, sounds, feelings, sights. It brings a life into the interview. So that's what I always like to advise people on.
Interviewing Skills and Detailed Responses
00:18:06
Speaker
And what was the second part of your question? What's a bad interview?
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah. So to even clarify that further, there are, I think, a lot of people, especially in the podcast sphere, because there's really no restrictions to the amount of time, though there should be. They're interviewers. They might ask good questions, but they're bad interviewers in that they are very wordy. And they have a bad, what I like to call, just a bad shot clock.
00:18:34
Speaker
they just go on and on they'll ask a question and then answer it and then ask a different one and like to me that's a huge pet peeve of mine and so that's what I noticed but you know so like what do you notice out there too given that you have such a good ear for it yeah I think that that's similarly I think that people let it get that's exactly that's a really good thing that drives me crazy too it's like somebody will
00:18:55
Speaker
All right, all right. Okay, so next question. It's like you kind of have to keep asking the question until you get the answer, right? So it's like, Oh, so what did you think of that book? Oh, I loved it, man. So good. So good. All right. So what did you like about the book? Oh, yeah, but I read this other book, too. That was really great. Yeah, but what did you like about that other book? I mean, like, was there any particular part in the book that really resonated to you? Yeah, you know, that part about chapter three. I love that part.
00:19:20
Speaker
What happened in chapter three? Tell me what happened in chapter three. You have to sort of like walk them back to the thing that you want them to get to, you know what I mean? You're like a little dog, shepherd dog, and you're kind of rounding them back to the stable, you know what I mean? You're nipping at their ankles like this way, man. Yeah, exactly. That's right. You have to be like super aggressive. I worked on the science desk for seven years at NPR and like,
00:19:49
Speaker
I'll just ask them if I like don't know something, I'll be like, all right, like, you said, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was like, okay, like, yeah, man, mRNA vaccine. So so what is that actually? And it's like, well, you know, it's the most important vaccines like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, totally. But what is it? You know, it's like, I'm also not afraid to like make myself a fool, because if I don't know, the audience is not going to know. So you got asked, you got to be an advocate for the audience.
00:20:19
Speaker
For sure, and I think that's where a lot of people who might ask decent questions get really insecure and will often ask the question and then they'll keep going, they'll keep talking because they want to prove to you that they're smart and that they have an answer for that question too. And in effect, what you just did was give the guest
00:20:42
Speaker
Your own answer for them to reply to when in fact It truly is and there are a lot of podcasts I used to listen to that now all of a sudden are like I can't take it man I'm like you you've been talking for three minutes Just like you got like 20 seconds 20 or 30 seconds is plenty of time to get a good question out and then let the guests shine and
00:21:06
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. You're supposed to bring the best out
Editing and Pacing in Interviews: Ira Glass Moment
00:21:09
Speaker
of your guests, for sure. You're supposed to, yes, let the guests shine and bring out the best in the guest.
00:21:20
Speaker
I'm going to get that tattooed somewhere. Yes. I love it. Yeah. You're an editor of them. You're editing them in real time. That's what interviewing is. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I think I heard an interview too with, it was on long form a couple of years ago with, you know, Ira Glass. And my God, that must be a hard interview.
00:21:42
Speaker
And there was a point in the interview towards the end where Ira was just like, oh, no, this is done. This interview is effectively over. He edited it to himself in real time. And it's just like, oh, and then I think it might have been Max Linske who was doing the interview. He kind of kept going. And Ira was like, oh, OK, I guess we're not done. So it was just like. Oh, that's so embarrassing. I know.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, and they left that tape in, so I thought that was, in a sense, kind of brave editing on their part that the fact that they would kind of let that show. Oh my gosh, that's so cringy too. I'm going to cut in right here just to clarify something.
00:22:23
Speaker
So it's about the 50-minute mark in episode 159 of the Long Form Podcast, this interview with Ira Glass, and Max Linsky, the interviewer, and Ira are talking about their favorite, or not their favorite, but their different motives for an interview. Max was merely wanting to talk to Ira, just like I sent you an email and I just thought it would be great to talk to you.
00:22:45
Speaker
Whereas Ira's main motive for the bulk of his interviewing for This American Life, obviously, is to get a quote, top for the show. And he's got to do it with quote, intent. He said, then he went on to say that he was a hack and then said that that's a good ending to edit the show on. But then they fire the mics back up for another round and they go for about another 20 minutes because Max didn't get to some questions he wanted to get to and he felt kind of crappy about it.
00:23:13
Speaker
So I was partly right in my recollection of this 2015 interview. I did mention that that part about him saying he was a hack was a good way to edit and end their interview. So okay, so I was partially there, okay? Okay, that's why I cut in to clarify, okay? Fine. Fine. Okay.
00:23:35
Speaker
Back to Malika.
00:23:53
Speaker
let's get you off, let's get the real you, let's get the real you shining through, get you off message. And so I try to like get people off message by diffusing the tension in the room. So like even if I was, I think I was interviewing like a Nobel Peace Prize winner who like had won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping women who have been victims of mass rape. And I was just like,
00:24:17
Speaker
honestly like i don't understand like how somebody could rape someone and like not feel bad about it like i kind of feel sorry for the men too and i said it like that in like literally the same way that i was telling you now and i think that it was like very off like it was like surprising for him and he was like uh yeah it is like i'm glad you said that like it is really depressing for men like they feel really bad and they like feel a lot of guilt and like suffer from ptsd afterward and like they're mortified and they suffer from a lot of trauma and
00:24:47
Speaker
And it got us like off this like, you know, he's been a Nobel Peace Prize winner. So it has like the same jam that he talks about all the time about his work. You know what I mean? Yeah. And sort of getting him like hitting him left field with a surprising question, I think can get them being like, all right, this interviewer is like, you know, she wants to talk about real stuff. Let's let's do that.
Narrative Interviewing Techniques
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah, and I curated a quote from Elise Spiegel, who's with This American Life Now, and she was with Invisibilia. And I wrote this down. This is actually, it was on How Sound. Well, actually, which is now Sound School with PRX, Rob Rosenthal's great show.
00:25:26
Speaker
And interviewing for a narrative is an entirely different beast, but she had this to say about it. I kind of want to get your riff on it. She said, you know, you have to gather an interview that gets you to every point in the narrative and gets them to reflect on every moment in the narratives and then delivers every insight they gleaned from their experience. And that's a very punchy quote, but that is, to me, my God, that is very hard to do. And I wonder if maybe you can riff on that and provide your insights to it.
00:25:56
Speaker
I'm
00:26:14
Speaker
like really long-term, long-time correspondent on the science desk. And he was showing me this chart that he made about the arc of his, the narrative of his story. And he had arcs for several different characters in almost like a line chart.
00:26:37
Speaker
that he had manually made. And I just thought like, wow, like this guy is like really thinking about the flow and like making sure that the audience is coming back full circle to the character. And I don't know, to get to that level, I would love to get to that level someday. I'm still at the maybe like the 200 level.
00:26:58
Speaker
In your recent newsletter, I love this little image that you posted from Instagram about perseverance and about seeds. And maybe as we sort of start to kind of pivot and segue closer into your graphic memoir, maybe you can just talk a little bit about this idea of perseverance and what that means and how it's embodied with seeds from flowers.
00:27:27
Speaker
Oh, I love that, yeah. I don't know, you know, when I was making, so what you're referring to is a four panel comic in which I, that I tried to make as minimal as possible with minimal text, but it goes something like, in spring I planted many seeds, some many seeds, many of them died, but some sprouted. And that's basically the sentiment of it. And,
00:27:54
Speaker
you know, it was, it's a very, to me, it felt like a very obvious metaphor for what I had been doing for the past year, which was like,
Perseverance in Creative Projects: Gardening Metaphor
00:28:02
Speaker
Oh my gosh, trying to find a new job. I have a new job now at NPR's Life Kit podcast. Trying to find a new job, making these other projects come to life and everything just wasn't coming together. And I felt so dejected, but I felt like surely if I keep planting, one of these things will freaking sprout.
00:28:25
Speaker
And they did and I was like, oh my gosh, it works. Now I'll know forever for the rest of my life that if I ever feel, to never be complacent, because if you are complacent, you're not planting seeds. And if you're not planting seeds, nothing will sprout. So you have to like be proactive essentially in life to get what you want. I feel a relief now. I'm going to take a break from planting seeds though. I'll tell you that much.
00:28:48
Speaker
Where did you put or how did you learn to dance with the rejection and the dejection of of that entire sentiment you just expressed. Oh my God. I actually think that like.
00:29:02
Speaker
being a creative person really sets you up for a really, really healthy and very realistic relationship with rejection. And critique, critique is also, being critiqued as a creative, you sort of learn to take it, to understand, to ask yourself, why was I rejected or critiqued for this particular idea or job or whatever it is, project?
00:29:29
Speaker
um to seek to understand it seek to change it and seek to do better next time but i think that that creatives are always like throwing themselves doing this new thing doing this new project trying to write this new book trying to make this zine happen and you know a lot of stuff doesn't happen but some of it does and i think that i don't know people in other fields gosh
00:29:51
Speaker
I'm sure they don't have to face the same amount of rejection that creatives do. People in bands, musicians, songwriters, artists, pottery makers, I don't know. Well, speaking of critiquing in the acknowledgements of your book, you have a little paragraph about giving a shout out to your beta readers.
00:30:12
Speaker
And I wonder for you how you go about soliciting the most constructive feedback, often from people who sometimes want to blunt the edges of the criticism.
Receiving and Implementing Feedback
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah, I actually wrote a guideline for myself that I posted on my Instagram about how to handle criticism. As an editor who gives lots of criticism all the time, it actually forced me, when I was asking for feedback from beta readers, it actually forced me to think about what was actually useful to me and what was actually just
00:30:44
Speaker
You know, a lot of people don't know how to give criticism, honestly. You know what I mean? I liked it. Well, you liked it. Why? I hated it. Well, why did you hate it? I just didn't like it. Well, what didn't you like about it? I don't know. You know what I mean?
00:30:59
Speaker
You get a lot of that. Yeah. It's just a feeling that I have. Right. And like sometimes, you know, when you, when you ask your friends to beta read something for you, I mean, one of them is a doctor. One of them is like an accountant. Like they're not people who are like well versed in like taking art and like then giving thoughts on it, which is fine, which is, you know, like I wanted a range of ideas and, um, and thoughts and stuff. But I think that when you handle critique, you have to be able to articulate very clearly.
00:31:29
Speaker
why you feel a particular way about that thing in which you are critiquing. So if there's no, if it doesn't hold water, and if I don't, if I can't argue it or talk about it, or we can't expand on it with each other, then I don't
00:31:46
Speaker
I don't really, it doesn't help me. So for example, my first editor, Ben Dela Cruz, I gave him my first book midway into the process. It was about to be published in like six months. I gave him the manuscript of my book and I asked him to read it, please. And his edits were so painful because he was right.
00:32:08
Speaker
He sent it back to me. He said, I don't like it. And I said, why don't you like it? I mean, like, what do you mean? It's like due in six months. What do you mean you don't like it? I was like, well, you repeat the same theme in, you know, from pages 79 through 100. You already said all of that stuff in the previous three chapters. So why are you repeating it again?
00:32:30
Speaker
And I was like, oh my God, you're so right. Like, I did do that. I didn't even realize that. And then he said, you know, you tend to wrap every chapter up in a neat little bow and it's not believable. And then I looked back and I was like, oh my God, you're right. Your relationship with your husband is not, is not, there's no tension. I feel like this is your sugar coating, your relationship with your husband doesn't feel real.
00:32:55
Speaker
And I was like, all right, so what kind of tension do you think I should add? Well, maybe in this section, you can add in a fight that you have, you know, that you feel comfortable sharing.
00:33:05
Speaker
that would make it more believable to the reader. So he had such specific examples in specific places where I could make changes. And that is the kind of edits that I want and the kind of critique that one should give somebody. I know it's kind of like hard to ask people to make those kinds of critiques, but like specific, actionable, something that you could stand behind if I challenged you on it. That's what makes good critique.
00:33:28
Speaker
All the more challenging, I imagine, for you is that not only do you have the writing component, but you also have an illustration component.
Balancing Text and Illustration in Graphic Memoirs
00:33:39
Speaker
And so there is a confluence of these sort of braiding rivers or parallel rivers, if you will.
00:33:48
Speaker
When you're constructing that or generating those kind of pages, what is the sort of internal math, if you will, that you're undergoing when you're like, okay, maybe this should be text narration and maybe this should be an image doing the heavy lifting?
00:34:06
Speaker
That's a really good question. I don't have like any kind of algorithm that I have. It's just sort of like a gut feeling. So for example, if I say, first of all, I started this new book, it won't always be like this. I started it as a text manuscript, 50 pages of written prose, basically, that I then adapted into comic.
00:34:29
Speaker
And I did it all in real time in, I didn't even like, I didn't even do thumbnails. I just sort of like the day of like, all right, so like, okay, so we're gonna draw this page. This page is, you know, I got in a fight with my dad. Okay, so anything that was like, obviously dialogue is dialogue, right? Anything that is like,
00:34:52
Speaker
describing the scene. So I was at dad's house and he was sitting on the chair and I was sitting in the balcony facing him. I don't need to say all that, right? I just draw it. But then the stuff that is almost like the connective tissue needs to be the narration part of the graphic novel. So the stuff like, I was 16 when I had my worst fight with dad. That's stuff that you can't really draw. You just gotta say it.
00:35:19
Speaker
So I guess that's pretty much the way that I do it. Anything that I can draw, I draw. Anything that I feel like I have to say because it would just be faster or it's more theoretical, I write. And anything that's dialogue is dialogue. And then my favorite part is to remove as much text as possible. So then I'll go back and do a text check.
00:35:40
Speaker
and like my favorite I like to write with very little with very few words so I'll just go and remove anything that does not need to be there I like the um I like the tension between the
00:35:54
Speaker
bear narration, a bear drawing, you know, my drawing style is very light and airy, a bear drawing style and like bear dialogue and like there's power in how they all combine together. And you have to read it in unison. There's no way for you to read just the narration and like, you know, fly through and you'll go, oh, I understood the story. It all has to work together in a component.
00:36:19
Speaker
I hate when I read graphic novels actually where it's like, like, there's just too much text. It's like, oh, then what's the art there for? It's just, art's there for no reason. You got to let the art do some work too.
00:36:31
Speaker
And when I've spoken to some illustrators about their work on this show, sometimes their frustration with their own work and their own art is by the time they get to the end, they've done, you know, hundreds of panels. And by the time they get to the end, they're already like a better illustrator. So then they go back to the very beginning because those look comparably kind of raw to what happened at the end. Do you ever find yourself in this cycle?
00:36:59
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I think by the end of the book, you're just like, you know what? Fuck it. It's done. I'm done with this thing. But you have to redraw so many pages because some things don't work. So you'll be like, okay, page 75 needs to be redrawn. Okay, page 32 needs to be redrawn. So you'll have a lot of inconsistent drawing throughout the whole book because you get edits in piecemeal.
00:37:22
Speaker
Last year, sometimes as a part of this podcast, I do an audio magazine where I'll put out a theme. And one of the themes was summer. And so I got essays on summer and kind of talked about what summer meant to everybody.
Cultural Identity and Finding One's Voice
00:37:38
Speaker
And this book, it's a summer book. And what does summer mean to you? Gosh, what does summer mean to me?
00:37:50
Speaker
A big inspiration for me while I was writing this book was Call Me By Your Name, the film. What's his face? Who's that guy? Timothy Chalamet. Timothy Chalamet. And I thought that that captured the essence of summer so beautifully, summers of your youth. It's like complete and utter
00:38:13
Speaker
an abject boredom and having too much time on your hands and like like trying to find ways to fill your time and like feeling anxious about growing up and just you couldn't wait to get your life started. Like summer felt like this big gap in time where you're just
00:38:35
Speaker
trying to rush through it, but you couldn't. It just, like, so long. It lasted forever. And I guess then it ends. And then it all ends. And you're like, oh, I wish I could have that summer again. Summer now. And I wish to have those days back again.
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah, and given that you're Filipino, Egyptian, American, that's sort of like the tripod of your sort of like cultural and national identities, you know, you go, you know, you spent your summers in Egypt and so there was often a feeling of like unrootedness that at least something sort of like an undercurrent of this that I, at least that I felt, the kind of pulse going through it.
00:39:21
Speaker
And I wonder for you, just given that you would spend so much time, say in Egypt and the rest of your time in the States, how you went about forging your own voice and your own identity as a young woman and then into your adulthood.
00:39:34
Speaker
What do you mean? I guess just, you know, trying, feeling, getting to a sense of, you know, knowing who you are at your core, you know, given that there was such sort of over the course of a year, a very sort of transient nature where you spent so much time in a foreign country than back here, then maybe there's just an unrootedness and maybe sometimes
00:40:02
Speaker
a difficulty in finding your own identity and your own voice? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I would say that I did have one constant and that was my diaries, which I still have now. And
00:40:18
Speaker
I think they always rooted me into knowing, like I always have this, um, when I wrote in my diary, when I wrote in my diary as a young person, they were all, the diary was always with me from whether I was in the States with my mom or flying to Egypt and being in fricking, I don't know, Sharmel Shih or like Alexandria or somewhere random in Egypt. I always had my diary with me and I had my memories from who I was the months before or even the year before. And I felt like,
00:40:47
Speaker
that kept me grounded to know what my inner voice was. As far as understanding my identities, I feel like I only recently started to unpack my feelings around my identity as somebody in my late 20s and early 30s.
00:41:05
Speaker
I had just sort of lived my whole life trying to and aspiring to be a white American person and didn't think or consider too much about my Arab or Filipino sides to my sadness. I spent so many years trying to fixate it on trying to be like a white American when I could have been leaning into and very proud of my Arab and Asian heritages.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that was maybe a poorly phrased question, but I just got a sense of – it might – just being in different cultures that are familiar, but even when you go to Egypt, you're the American, you're a proud American there, and then –
00:41:55
Speaker
Yeah, it was just... I see what you mean, like being in different places, how did I reckon with my cultures in different places? Yeah, that is pretty, that is exactly what I'm getting at, and I just couldn't phrase it that way. Oh, yeah. No, no, that's okay. I guess like in Egypt, my dad had encouraged me to be very proud of being American, yet at the same time, and he always told people like, oh, my daughter's from California, she lives by Disneyland. You know, she has a really, like when I spoke, he loved the fact that I had a perfect American accent.
00:42:24
Speaker
But at the same time, he wanted me to be an Arab woman, to address a certain way, to act a certain way, to talk a certain way. When I was around other people, I have very demure mannerisms, and that really freaking annoyed me, because he wanted me to be both things.
00:42:41
Speaker
only one thing, it seemed like. He wanted me to be an Arab, but also an American. And that was a very hard, you can't, it's hard to be both things. And then my Filipino side, I had to sort of push that down because in the Arab world, Filipinos make up the majority of the labor class. And so I didn't want people to make assumptions about me or my family. My dad didn't even tell people that he had been previously married to a Filipino because the joke would have been then,
00:43:08
Speaker
So did you marry your maid? So I never told people that. I kept that all to myself. I think that code switching is different in the U.S. for sure, but it certainly is different in Egypt, where I wanted to fit in as an Arab, and I looked Arab, but I didn't act Arab.
Family Dynamics in Memoir Writing
00:43:28
Speaker
I wasn't Arab enough.
00:43:30
Speaker
It's in what I think your book does extremely well in which I think My favorite memoirs do very well is they don't know they don't Solely dwell on the author's hang-ups and insecurities and whatever it looks outward and this and this story is very much to me like a lot about holla and your father and I loved you know, you're Seeing their stories as filtered through you as a child and adolescent and a young adult
00:44:00
Speaker
In your telling of this story, how important was it for you to illustrate their perspectives and their point of view and their changes over the course of your young life? Yeah, I wanted to use Halla and Dad's relationship
00:44:16
Speaker
as, I want to use their relationship as a device for me understanding the real world. Like as I aged, I understood their dynamic more clearly through the eyes of an adult. And their relationship also helped me grow up as a person. Their difficult relationship helped me grow up as a woman in knowing the hard, real things of our life and world in relationships.
00:44:45
Speaker
Halle and dad both read the manuscripts of the book and I did not allow them to, I did not, I told them I would not sign this book contract until they like vetted the book and signed off on it. So my stepmom Halle doesn't speak English so I paid my brother $25 a chapter to translate the whole book for her and take notes on her end and then
00:45:11
Speaker
I painstakingly made the notes in the book back so that we would all be in agreement of what this book was. And I also, my dad and Hala, spoiler alert, they eventually get a divorce, but they're exes with each other. So they're not super close. So I didn't want to get like, I had to make sure that each of them were comfortable with what the other was saying about them. So that was like just a lot of back and forth between the both of them and like,
00:45:42
Speaker
Um, you know, Halla would say like, well, I didn't see it that way. And then my dad would be like, well, I did. So you choose Malika. Like, what do you want? How do you want to portray this? So that was pretty hard. But ultimately, I think
00:45:59
Speaker
My dad said that after he read my book, he cried for like a day and a half because I think that was the first time that he really felt seen in terms of what had happened in the afterfall of his divorce and what he had been really trying to do in Egypt for all those years. And for my stepmom, Hala was a hero of the book and she just, you know, we did an interview together yesterday for a news publication.
00:46:26
Speaker
my sister Salma translated and she basically said that you know you had caught so many things in our lives that I had forgotten or just didn't realize that you would notice and she just said that it really touched her and she felt really proud.
00:46:44
Speaker
uh to be part of the book and you know i think i want to say one thing that like in the arab world people are very private people are very very deeply private they always show their their best their best face forward you never want to show weakness to others it's a very social society right and and so you don't you don't you want to show your best
00:47:06
Speaker
you don't want to show you air your dirty laundry out to the world. This is just something that's not done in the Arab world. And so the fact that they both let me write about their divorce in such an open way is like really monumental. I think my dad was like, I was really shocked. And he said, Well, what did you expect? Did you expect
00:47:26
Speaker
And did you expect that because I'm an Arab man that I would say no? And I was like, yeah, kind of. And he's like, no, I love you and I'll support you in whatever you do. And he also said, I don't think that anyone in our family would read this anyway, so you're free to do whatever you want. So I was like, okay. As long as dad and Hala are like fine with it, then I'm fine with it.
00:47:49
Speaker
There's a moment in the book, too, where you and your father have a big fight. But in the end, you decide to ask for a sandwich from him. And he's so happy to make you the sandwich. And there are no words exchanged, really. It's just an exchange with food. And I remember when I was reading that the first time, it was just such a poignant scene. It even made my eyes burn a bit, because it was so evocative and so touching that.
00:48:19
Speaker
You guys, no words needed to be said in that moment. It was just like, let's enjoy this, let's enjoy this little meal together.
00:48:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's how so many of our fights go in childhood though, right? Like you don't say, sorry, sorry, mom. Like you don't do that really. You're like, you just sort of like let it, let the fight settle and then you kind of resume normalcy at a certain point. And then all is forgiven, all is forgotten. And I think that that's how real life is.
Cultural Norms and Family Privacy
00:48:51
Speaker
You know, there's never this like big moment where you're like,
00:48:54
Speaker
It's okay, son. I love you. Come into my arms and I'll give you a hug and everything will be all right. Like that's not how it works in the real world. And I thought that was actually something that really happened. I drew a comic in my diary when I was 16. I think that was a year that that happened. And I had told dad that I didn't want any of the food that he was giving me. And so I felt bad later about it. And I was like, all right, I'll have a sandwich or whatever. And yeah, all of us were given.
00:49:25
Speaker
How did you settle on how you drew yourself as a young child, as a teenager, and then as a young adult?
00:49:32
Speaker
here's something that's crazy. I've been drawing myself the same way for years, since I was a kid. I don't have any choice. One of the critiques on Goodreads, which I know I'm not supposed to be reading, but one of the critiques is like, I hate her drawing style. She draws so childishly. And I'm like, dude, I wish I could draw any other way. This is literally just what comes out of my hands when I draw.
00:49:58
Speaker
like this is how I see myself. I see myself as a big round head, pumpkin head with crazy frizzy hair and like big bugging eyes and like an insane, like always insane mannerisms with my like hands or my eyebrows or my mouth. I'm a very animated person. Like I'm actually just making animations with my hands right now as we're talking. So I like that's that's just how I feel. I
00:50:24
Speaker
way that I draw myself is how I feel like I actually I expressively identify as myself. And as I'm paging through the through the book here too and I just I'm just seeing these moments where towards the end of the final quarter where you know how is really expressing to you how unhappy she is and how trapped she feels
00:50:44
Speaker
And it's something that, you know, she confides in you. And I wonder for you, just harboring those feelings or taking on those feelings, you know, between, you know, two adults, you know, parental figures, like, was that, like, what was that like for you as you were, had to take that on and internalize a lot of this internal strife from, you know, from, you know, your parental figures?
00:51:09
Speaker
I think that that's a big part of growing up, right? Like we start to see our parents as people. And that was a big growing up moment for me when Halla was telling me about her unhappiness with my dad, but then me feeling this tension to be loyal to my dad because he was my dad. He was the first person who was in my life before Halla, and I had allegiance to him, not Halla.
00:51:34
Speaker
But I'd also developed a very deep and profound relationship with Hala over the years too. So I also felt allegiance toward her. But as a young adult, I had to make the decision of what to do in that particular situation. Would I go to dad and tell him everything? Or would I empathize with Hala and sort of keep her secrets and be her confidant? And I decided at that moment that I would be her confidant and just, you know, be there for her.
00:52:02
Speaker
And that was a hard choice to make as an adult. And I also felt a lot of sympathy for my dad at that moment too. I sort of saw the writing on the wall that if Hala was unhappy now, she was probably going to leave him. And I didn't know what position that would leave her children. I also understood that Hala was a woman in the Arab world who had never worked a day in her life. What would become of
00:52:28
Speaker
Her position, if she had left by dad, where would she find work? Where would she get money? Would she be able to afford to take the kids? These very real problems started to emerge. I was only like 20 years old when we had that conversation. I was also trying to figure out my own life outside of my life in Egypt, trying to finish up college, trying to think about my next internship. And meanwhile, my family was sort of falling apart.
00:52:58
Speaker
I was all these summers that I had sort of lamented having to endure, you know, being dragged to Egypt and whatnot, as my dad put it in yesterday's interview. You know, being dragged to Egypt that sort of like was put in perspective. I had this like moment where I was like, wait, is this
00:53:18
Speaker
Is this it? Is this all I'm gonna get with the whole family unit together? Like I thought we were this perfect little thing, even though it was really hard. I thought we were like this perfect little unit. You're drawn in your, you usually have red on in every panel. So what's the significance of the color red?
00:53:39
Speaker
Oh, the red's nothing. I mean, like, I think the red is from, like, the previous book where I was always wearing red. But red is, like, just to make me just, you know, it's like Homer Simpson's always wearing, like, the same outfit. It's very similar. It's like I'm just, just for consistency's sake, just in case you don't know who I am, here I am in the red shirt.
00:53:57
Speaker
And Hal is always wearing like yellow and purple too. Yeah. Over the course of, say, the writing of this and the drawing of this, did you come to any sort of revelation or maybe a greater understanding of who Hal is and was and who your father is and was throughout this process?
00:54:19
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. You know, writing is about discovery and I spent two years navel gazing at this one particular part of my life, this part of my life that was all my summers, childhood summers in Egypt. I, you know, if you thought about anything for two years, I'm sure you'll come up with some revelations, right? This is what I realized. I realized that like,
00:54:44
Speaker
My dad tried so hard to make a family. He tried so, so hard to remarry, to have kids, to try to bring me along for this ride in creating his new family unit and to have me join in on that. He tried so hard and he just wasn't good at it. He kind of had it for a while and sort of like failed at it eventually with their divorce.
00:55:13
Speaker
And I loved my dad for all that effort, for all the effort that he put into trying to foster this relationship with me and trying to bring him into this new section of his life. I loved my dad for that. I thought that I had a newfound respect for him and I never appreciated how much work and energy it took for him to probably convinced his wife, like, hey, can we have my 17-year-old daughter come around this summer again? I'm sure that was super annoying.
00:55:41
Speaker
super annoying um and then i was like a teenager so i was being annoying anyways you know uh trying to be cool you know trying to be you know distant with my with my family because i was like too cool you know and then with hala i realized a lot of things i learned a lot of things from her one that in life it's possible to create really profound relationships
00:56:04
Speaker
with people without language, without common language, without common culture, without anything at all, it's possible to create extremely profound and deep relationships.
00:56:18
Speaker
You know, I also learned from her that power comes in different ways. You know, she was a very typical Arab woman, right? She was, you know, she was a housewife and she, she was a stay-at-home mother. We'll put it that way. She was stay-at-home mother. She, you know, she didn't work. She deferred to my dad for a lot of things, but she showed her power in lots of ways. And she ended up being the most courageous person I have ever met in my entire life.
00:56:46
Speaker
And I won't spoil the book on that. And then lastly, the things that happen in life, they're not going to stick around forever. And they may be really hard at the moment. And they were certainly hard for me. Awkward, awkward, and lonely, and confusing, and weird, trying to be in this blended family. But there are good times in those moments too. And when they're gone,
00:57:16
Speaker
that's all you're gonna get. And it will not always be like that, as the book cover suggests. It will always be like this, our lives. Well, it gets to a point of something you shared recently in your newsletter. It's very high on the bittersweet scale. Yeah, it is. It's a very high on the bittersweet scale. I wanted to create a work that could show the
00:57:45
Speaker
I wanted to create a work that would explore connection without language and context. And it just so happened to now take place in the Middle East, a place that I feel like it's not
00:57:56
Speaker
often represented in American media, not represented well, and not represented, yeah, just not represented well or often. No. Yeah. Well, what we see is beige and rubble over here. Beige and rubble. That was actually a particular color choice. I said I wanted vibrant colors only for my book.
00:58:19
Speaker
So the book uses as vibrant a color palette as possible. But yeah, I was very proud to also like let people into the world of the Arab home. Not an Arab American home, an Arab home in the Middle East, which I think is more even more elusive to a lot of Americans.
00:58:37
Speaker
And Malika, as I like to bring these conversations down for a landing, I always like asking the guests for a recommendation for the listeners of some kind, and that can be anything. So I extend that to you. What would you recommend for listeners out there? Okay, so the thing that I... Oh, okay. I'll recommend a poem, and I'll recommend an app that I really like. Can I recommend two things? Oh, absolutely. Go for it.
00:59:04
Speaker
Okay. Um, so I, the poem that I love and it's very dear to me over the past few years has been John Berger's and our faces, my heart briefest photos. It's one of the most beautiful poems I've ever read and I'd like for you to read it too. If you have a chance. Sure. Yeah.
00:59:20
Speaker
And then the second thing I would love to recommend is the app Autumn. I always, I sound like I'm like an advertiser, but like I really love Autumn. It just like reads you long form articles in like audio version. And it's just the best way to like kill 30 minutes while you're walking around your neighborhood.
00:59:39
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, I love it. I have been a fan of your work for a while. And this was really a thrill to get to talk to you in depth about how you go about living a creative life. And then, of course, the making and the storytelling behind this incredible graphic memoir that you've written. So just thanks so much for the work. And thanks for covering out the time to do this, Malika. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for the incredibly thoughtful questions and such great interviewing. I enjoyed my time with you.
01:00:19
Speaker
we did it again cnfers don't ask me how i i swear i i just don't get it though i did i rearranged my office which was kind of disorienting but kind of cool and it gave me better access to my big wall calendars and i've been starting to
01:00:36
Speaker
Put on those calendars like when I need to start a book when I need to finish a book when I've got certain interviews scheduled when certain ones are publishing and suddenly the helicopter view is allowing me to see the production schedule of the show and Makes me feel more like Tom Brady in the pocket versus say Anyone else other than Tom Brady?
01:01:00
Speaker
Thank you to Malika Garib. What a fun conversation. I adore her. I adore her work. And I can't wait to see what she comes up with next. In the meantime, it won't always be like this. Published by 10 Speed Press. It's just such a cool book. I can't recommend it enough.
01:01:21
Speaker
I really can't. I cannot recommend it enough. Do I even have a parting shot today? Oh yeah, I did tease one out. Anyway, here it is. I put out a little survey to the CNF Pod members at the Patreon page. That's patreon.com slash CNF Pod. If you want to window shop and throw a few bucks into the coffers for our world domination,
01:01:44
Speaker
the money, it's the only money I make from this podcast and it's from the Patreon crew. Lest you think I'm getting wealthy in these parts, I put out a poll about the transcript situation.
01:01:59
Speaker
yay or nay? Should I keep doing them? Do you get value out of them? And it was a resounding nay, not because they're bad and not because they don't necessarily offer value, but because nobody really has the time to read them. They, there's an audio format, duh. And so they, listeners were like, yeah, we just like the audio component of it. We don't need the transcript.
01:02:25
Speaker
And everyone appears to be super happy with the podcast itself as a product so they don't feel like they need anything extra I want to deliver something extra because giving a few bucks like two or four or ten to the show every month is Incredibly generous like here is this thing that was free and is free and it was for many years and then I started putting out the collection plate and
01:02:49
Speaker
It's very hard to start to throw money into that or it's very hard when someone like me or any podcast host or any creator of any kind starts putting around that collection plate after they've been giving the thing out for free and then suddenly you're like, hey, by the way, it would be awesome if you contributed. And I understand why it's a very hard bridge or river to cross or like this
01:03:16
Speaker
Oh, it's coming out free anyway, why would I pay you? I understand.
01:03:21
Speaker
So I still wanna deliver a little something extra. I feel, I was, regarding the transcripts, I was feeling guilty. I couldn't keep pace with cleaning them up and then offering those to the Patreon crew. So this takes a lot of pressure off me. And I'll likely offer up some goodies here and there, like when I shared my query tracker. That seemed to go over really well.
01:03:48
Speaker
And whenever my book proposal sells, if it sells, I'll share that because book proposals are such a weird territory to navigate. Nobody has much by way of concrete answers as to how they should be done, and lots of people are weird about sharing theirs even after their book is published.
01:04:07
Speaker
I don't know. It's like looking in someone's medicine cabinet, I guess. I don't know. Point being, I will throw some goodies towards the Patreon crew. Like lightning bolt buttons, holy shit. I'm also thinking of moving the CNF and Happy Hour to the Patreon page. It's something I did for and with the newsletter crowd. And the regulars, shout out to Suzanne and Betsy, they are members. The other regular is Lori.
01:04:35
Speaker
And she's not a patreon member, but I'd grandfather in as she's not not a member of the patreon page no bigs That is no big deal, man But she shows up to the happy hours whenever I put out the code in the newsletter And she's just she shows up like clockwork from the Florida panhandle, and I would grandfather someone like Lori in I Have that kind of power man, and I wield it like mule near
01:05:05
Speaker
Mjolnir. Duh. Hey, as you can tell, I'm staying wild. You do the same. Stay wild, seeing efforts, and if you can't do, interview. See ya.