If you have an irrational fear of abandoned construction equipment or an intense love of John Waters’ original Hairspray, this is the discussion for you. It’s also for you if you like fantastic people, because April Richardson (Chelsea Lately) couldn’t be cooler. She and Janet discusses zines, gender-bending, and why getting grounded doesn’t work when you have lots of pen pals– in Episode 17 of The JV Club.
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Guys, I know I shouted you all out on the podcast, but thanks again for these great comments. I feel like I could do a whole podcast episode based on all of the great feedback for April’s episode alone!
This is the first episode I have ever listened to and the first time I have ever heard of April but I needed another podcast for work and it was a cute girl who apparently liked Morrissey. And Im very glad I downloaded it. Great show! And have now listened to a few others. Great job. I love a good talk about ocd music nerds.
http://exploredia.com/worlds-biggest-swimming-pool/
Here’s a pool for you – I feel the same about the ocean. Great show!
April Richardson is one of my favorite people ever. Not only does she still say ‘jazzed’ but she wears incredible clothes (check out http://remarkably-dressed.tumblr.com). Beyond all that she is funny and relatable and has great taste in music. She isn’t on Chelsea Lately nearly enough. More April on TV, I say!
Janet, you are a delight to listen to. Love the rapport you always have with your guests.
How could you mention women’s lit and sci-fi and not then bring up Ursula K Le Guin? I was a pretty clueless kid, but when found my parents’ copy of The Left Hand of Darkness at 13 or 14, it really informed my views on gender.
You guys hit some really good notes today. You’re both right in saying that listening to passionate people discuss what they’re passionate about is enthralling no matter the subject.
I know this because I had no idea what you guys were talking about 90% of the time during this episode, but I still enjoyed myself.
Thanks for the great podcast, and for adding more to my To Read/Watch list (it is getting a bit long though…).
(Which in no way should be considered a dismissal of Walker’s work, so much as her work as example of what Could be justified more easily in too many contexts where justification is demaned than Winterson’s)…Vonnegut participated in fannish activities, too, for that matter, at least as far as attending Milford Conferences with fellow sf and fantasy writers in the late ’50s/early ’60s and contributing to the fanzine PITFCS ( http://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Advent/Cogswell.htm )…some recognition of granfalloons might’ve emerged from that experience…
Wow…more to react to than I have time to write about, but an unusually close to home episode for me, even given that I’ve managed to miss Richardson on CL when I catch the series (very spottily). All the perzines and other fanzine components that were pioneered by the sf/fantasy fiction fans before spreading to the comics fans and the punk rockers and from them into the kind of Zine Culture FACTSHEET FIVE would document during its run…and how much the fanzine culture has become, essentially, the blog culture (though FaceBook and its predecessors have been trying to take away some of that thunder…the internet and even the web (which is often what people mean by “the internet”) were already in place by the time Riot Grrl was in full flower, but were only beginning to become demotic tools…AOL was the FB of the time., and just as dominant. I suspect had you all been as exposed to as much of THE UNDERSEA WORLD OF JACQUES COUSTEAU from a young age as I was, the negative vibes given off by oceans might’ve been lessened…love the tales of attraction/repulsion, and indeed all the self-revelation in this episode, Janet…and surely you’ve noted how often you’ve been meeting and interviewing people whose attraction to L. M. Montgomery’s work and its adaptations has been rather congruent to your own…fangirl!
Or, I should’ve written, (not-not-personalized way).
Womens’ studies programs are, or at least have been, a little more leery of fiction writers such as Jeanette Winterson, as being seen as too libertine to be justified to peers and admins…Alice Walker can be “gotten by” in part because she’s African-American (stress on both sides of the hyphen) and writes at least as much nonfiction as fiction and her fiction dealing with sexuality often seems a bit, well, more sober. While Winterson, aside from being Not Invented Here, seems a little too Susie Bright for some cirricula, or at least she used to seem thus. Hell, even bell hooks faced a fair amount of criticism when she wrote her heavily sexually-informed critique of THE PIANO, from her frequent readers who were a bit uncomfortable with hooks coming at that “text” in such a subjective (or at least not personalized) way.
Fantastic show as always, Janet. As a hetero male I find shows like this and Totally Laime to be kind of guilty pleasures given the their somewhat girl-centric natures. Speaking of which, Elizabeth Laime would be a delight to hear on here.