If Ya All Alone, Pick Up the Phone
by T. Hodler
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Matt [Groening] and I totally dug each other from the very first, though from a distance—because I thought he was really square and I believe he thought (rightly) that I was an excitable and intense hippy. Once he became editor of our school paper, I used to write the most insane letters to the editor I could think of, signing any kind of name to them, and he would print them. He probably knew who they were from, but I liked thinking he had no idea.
I used to love dropping in at the paper to stare at him because he looked like the straightest guy on the whole campus. This was in 1976 at a hippie college in Olympia, Washington.
He actually wore a shirt and pants. A shirt with buttons and actual pants.
That’s Lynda Barry talking, in an interview published in issues 54 and 55 of The New-York Ghost. I’d post PDFs of the issues, but I’m not sure it’s kosher. But you can get free copies by going to the Ghost site and asking, I think. (At least issue 55. Don’t get mad at me if I’m wrong, please.) It’s worth it for Barry fans. Only a few paragraphs of Don Quixote stuff before it gets good.
Labels: Lynda Barry, Matt Groening, New-York Ghost
I love how she writes. I don’t think it was necessary for her to put Groening in Best of Comics since he can publish himself on Butterfinger wrappers. I would like some of the hours back I spent on watching the Simpsons.
I was really excited for two sentences that Tim Hodler describes himself as an “excitable and intense hippy.” But it just Lynda Berry. Darn!