Roz Chast & Patty Marx, YOU CAN ONLY YELL AT ME FOR ONE THING AT A TIME
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[0:40]literary agents, and more. I'm here today with Patricia Marks and Ross Chast,
[0:44]who are the co-authors, illustrators of the book.
[0:47]You can only yell at me for one thing at a time, rules for couples,
[0:50]and also why don't you write my eulogy now so I can correct it.
[0:54]Ross Chast, the illustrator, is the author of the number one
[0:58]New York Times bestselling memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant,
[1:01]a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. She's been drawing cartoons since
[1:05]she was a child in Brooklyn. She has contributed to the New Yorker regularly
[1:09]and also many other publications. Her book Going Into Town, A Love Later to New York,
[1:13]was a gift to her child when leaving home. She currently lives in New York City.
[1:17]Patty has been a New Yorker contributor since 1989, a former writer for Saturday Night Live
[1:22]and Rugrats. She is the author of several books, including Let's Be Less Stupid,
[1:27]him, her, him again, the end of him, and starting from happy.
[1:31]She was the first woman elected to the Harvard Lampoon, originally from Philadelphia,
[1:35]an recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is taught at Princeton NYU and Stony Brook University.
[1:40]She currently lives in New York City, so welcome to Patty and Ross on the pub day
[1:45]for you can only yell at me for one thing at a time. Welcome to Ross and Patty,
[1:50]thank you so much for coming on mom's and have time to read books.
[1:52]Thank you for having us. Ross and Patty have brought their beautiful,
[1:56]teal-colored nucleolase to this interview, which is a first, so we're going to have a little concert
[2:01]in the middle. The turquoise helps the sound. I bet. We find that Mahogany doesn't have a good tone.
[2:11]So your book today is called, you can only yell at me for one thing at a time rules for couples.
[2:17]So it's kind of self-explanatory, but what is this book about and what made you write this book
[2:22]right now? We both live with people. Ross is married. I am not married, but this person I live
[2:29]with is awfully close. And problems come up. And we've solved them.
[2:37]I think a lot of times with couples, the things that you fight about are not the things that
[2:43]are talked about in a lot of couples advice books. And I'm not saying that these, that if you don't
[2:50]fully pull the thread on these problems, the whole thing is not going to unravel. But, you know,
[2:55]some of the things that Patty wrote about and I illustrated are just no matter what kind of couple
[3:01]you are, if you're living with another person, these things are going to come up. And most books
[3:06]about how to have a good marriage or a good relationship are so romantic and living with someone
[3:14]isn't all that romantic when you're loading the dishwasher. It's not, you're not starry eyes.
[3:20]Right, right. They're romantic. And sometimes they're very, very like serious. And it's not like
[3:27]these fights aren't serious. They are. But they're just much more, I mean, the things that my husband
[3:33]and I will have fights about, they're not really about like, well, I guess you might say, well,
[3:40]recently my husband got quite angry at me because I put the raspberries on the lower shelf
[3:46]as opposed to the top shelf where evidently raspberries belong like in some sort of ideal universe,
[3:54]I would have put, you know, and it was just like, I was just amazed that like he took that so
[4:01]personally. And also how a little fight, if you call raspberries a little can suddenly become about
[4:09]selfishness or in danger within a few seconds. You know, it's like the selfishness of my putting
[4:18]the raspberries, the thoughtlessness involved in that gesture. You know, but it's pretty funny
[4:24]in a certain way. Other thing that is amusing when you're not in the middle of it is how repetitive
[4:31]the arguments are. Oh, I mean, not only do you argue about the same thing. We have transportation
[4:38]or temperature arguments all the time. Yes. It's the same script. It's the same script. It's almost
[4:45]like that joke about like when two guys are on the desert island and they're telling each other
[4:50]jokes, but they've told all the jokes. And so the guy just goes like number 49, you know, and it's
[4:56]like that's I feel sometimes like when my husband and I have a certain fight about like leaving the
[5:01]house, it's like, oh, we're on fight number 117. I know this one. We've had it like every week
[5:06]week we have this one. How long have you been married? Let's see, 19. We met in 1980 and we
[5:14]married in 84. So what? 36? 30? Yes, 36 years coming up in 36 years. I know it's nuts. And how does
[5:23]how does your husband and your partner, how do they feel about this book? Oh, well, we're getting
[5:28]a divorce. It's just, I think there's nothing in it that's surprising to him. You know, my thought
[5:37]lessness with the strawberries, my thoughtlessness with the illustrations, my, you know, well,
[5:41]this is about me, isn't it? You know what I'm kind of. I feel like you tapped into so many things
[5:48]that so many people fight about like the ones that maybe I respond to might not be the ones
[5:52]that the next person does. Yeah. Some of my favorites, by the way, if you are the word
[5:56]mister in the relationship, don't correct the other person's every little mistake,
[6:01]save it for when you cannot stand it anymore. Yeah, in the illustration, you have irregardless
[6:05]is one of those. Oh, it's nuts. That's the kill. That's almost a deal breaker. That word.
[6:11]But the problem we've just, Ross and I have discussed this, is correcting the person aggravates
[6:18]the problem sometimes. Yes. My boyfriend has, has grammar quirks. And he knows they're wrong,
[6:26]and he insists on using them. And I don't know if I'm not around if he says it, but
[6:31]yeah. So it's kind of being with a toddler, knowing what to do. Yeah.
[6:40]You have another one, spike the orange juice with CBD oil as a remedy for perhaps some of these
[6:47]issues. CBD oil works for everything. Yeah. Or nothing. Yeah. It's good for your hair.
[6:56]You know, it's good for your skin. It's a good furniture. Furniture polish.
[7:01]It works for everything. Patty, I just wanted to talk quickly about this essay you wrote
[7:06]about 23andMe, which I thought was so funny not to divert away from this book, but you called
[7:11]it 23andhim for the New Yorker. Oh, yes. Which I thought was so funny. You said, you know,
[7:16]you call it the spoiler alert test, and you make fun of the whole 23andMe, you know,
[7:22]which is never done. Oh, you've never even done that. That was my question. It's sad you didn't
[7:26]get it yourself. No, I don't want to. I don't really care who my ancestors are. I know they're not
[7:31]good. And I don't want to know. And I certainly don't want to know what the future beholds in the way
[7:40]of suffering physically. How long are you going to die? Let them surprise me. I mean, it's bad
[7:46]enough. My mother's 93 and seeing what I will become physically. It's really when I wish
[7:55]I would adopt it. I kind of wish you were going to be a surprise. So I've done 23andMe.
[8:00]I have. I have. And I'm okay, generally. The best part about 23andMe that I found is you can
[8:08]track yourself against benchmarks of other people of your background. Oh, so you can win.
[8:13]You can win. No, not like that. I mean, for instance, they say the average weight of somebody else,
[8:20]your height, who has the same exact background is. And it ended up being my weight exactly. So for
[8:27]the first time, I was like, well, now I don't have to watch my weight anymore. I mean,
[8:31]this is exactly the way that I'm meant to be because what you do, but you have all the other people
[8:35]to gain weight. That's true. Well, I can just keep force eating them, but have you done 23andMe?
[8:42]No, no, I did. No, not at all. I did a DNA thing, but not different from ancestry because my
[8:51]son's wife is very into what do they call that genealogy. And so I did that. And they said that
[8:58]I was like 10% like Greek and Italian, which like really surprised me. But then I talked to
[9:04]somebody who's actually Andy who said that it's no, it's the results are based on the number
[9:11]of people who take the test, not like some sort of, you know, actual information, like general
[9:19]population. It's just the number of people. I don't know. He explained it in a way that I
[9:23]understood at the time and obviously can't repeat because it's probably too early in the morning.
[9:27]But yeah, I know nothing about any Italian or Greek relatives. As far as I know, they're all from
[9:33]Eastern Europe or Russia. So here's a good story that you'll cut out because it's really
[9:38]irrelevant to our book, but a friend of mine did the 23andMe and she learned some interesting
[9:44]things and she was telling her doctor. She was there for a checkup about this and her doctor was
[9:50]uncharacteristically silent for a while. And finally said, well, sometimes it works out and sometimes
[9:57]it doesn't. And then it goes.
[10:00]while later, she said, well, I guess I can tell you.
[10:02]She did one of those tests and found out
[10:06]that she'd always known that her mother had gotten
[10:11]a sperm donor because she couldn't,
[10:13]something was wrong, I don't know.
[10:15]And what she didn't know.
[10:16]And it was early enough in the days
[10:19]when they didn't have sort of the system.
[10:20]So she went to her doctor and her doctor who says,
[10:22]I can give you sperm 43 other people.
[10:25]She's related to.
[10:27]Wow.
[10:28]And she goes to reunions.
[10:29]Oh my gosh.
[10:31]It's the interesting thing.
[10:33]Most of them became doctors.
[10:36]Oh my god, that's wild.
[10:38]Yeah.
[10:39]Well, I was talking to somebody about those weird,
[10:42]you know, the things that people who say, no,
[10:44]there's no nature.
[10:45]It's all nurture.
[10:47]My father and I have the same, there's a weird, well,
[10:51]he's gone now.
[10:52]But there was a kind of, we both recognized
[10:55]people's handwriting, we're very attuned to that.
[10:57]And I didn't know that he had this
[11:00]until I was in my 30s, but he was a teacher.
[11:02]And he was kind of, it was just like this thing
[11:06]that he could sort of do, you know.
[11:08]And like, you know, he knew cartoonist handwriting.
[11:11]I can imitate the handwriting.
[11:13]This is like, you know, what a thing I'm boasting about.
[11:17]I can imitate the handwriting of like the kids
[11:19]that I grew up with in grade school.
[11:22]I remember when they changed their handwriting.
[11:24]I remember when like so-and-so like
[11:26]discovered a new sort of J that she like changed.
[11:28]And what?
[11:29]And I can imitate the like and like, you know,
[11:31]I would have been a good forger probably.
[11:32]I can afford, I can forge Lord and Taylor,
[11:35]but it hasn't come loose to bring it back to our book.
[11:38]Yes.
[11:39]The problem we're living with someone is that you have not,
[11:45]you have not raised them nor have you been raised
[11:48]by the same people.
[11:49]So they're like, shaped in a different way
[11:51]than you want them to be.
[11:53]And believe they should be raised.
[11:55]And you have to kind of change them in that's impossible.
[11:58]So you have to have these rules.
[12:00]Yes.
[12:01]Yeah.
[12:01]Have you ever had success with trying to change anybody?
[12:04]No.
[12:04]No, no, no, no.
[12:06]But it doesn't stop you from trying, right?
[12:08]Always, like I find I always try to-
[12:10]I just want to get my way.
[12:11]I don't care what they do.
[12:12]Yeah.
[12:13]Yes, I just don't want them to say irregardless.
[12:17]And you know, if you just followed these simple rules
[12:20]like everything would be so great.
[12:22]But they think they're right also.
[12:24]Yeah.
[12:25]And that's the thing is there's some things
[12:27]I have no opinions about lots and lots and lots.
[12:29]Yeah.
[12:30]When I have an opinion, I know it's correct.
[12:34]Yes, well, it's like the loading the dishwasher thing,
[12:37]which other people, I mean, Sandy Fraser
[12:40]wrote a humor piece about that.
[12:42]I think the loading the dishwasher issue with couples
[12:46]is people have ideas on how to do it.
[12:49]And this is like an ongoing sort of silent fight
[12:53]with me and my husband.
[12:54]Like I put the spoons a certain way.
[12:58]And then I look inside the dishwasher
[13:00]and they have been switched to a different way.
[13:03]And so then I just sort of silently
[13:04]switch them back to the correct way.
[13:06]And this will go on until if you're
[13:08]like the last person who is doing the dishes,
[13:11]then you get your way.
[13:12]You know, because both of us.
[13:14]But he is so picky about how the long-readie
[13:18]should be done.
[13:19]It is well.
[13:20]And I guess I should be glad because he's doing the laundry.
[13:22]I do the folding.
[13:23]But he has this whole system.
[13:25]He adds like vinegar at a certain point.
[13:28]I don't know, like some crazy thing, probably CBD oil
[13:31]for all I know.
[13:33]Just see, he has a system.
[13:34]And one of my kids said that when he left home,
[13:38]he could not believe how easy it was to do laundry
[13:41]because he had always thought it was this kind of complicated,
[13:44]sort of scientific process, but it was just, you know,
[13:47]my husband is very fussy.
[13:49]Well, in a general way, people have different standards.
[13:53]Yes, oh, God, yes.
[13:55]And I don't want things on the floor that don't belong
[13:59]on the floor.
[14:00]And if I clean up like the puddle of Diet Coke on the floor
[14:05]or his sock, I get accused of being neurotic.
[14:09]I'm not getting into your neurosis about order.
[14:12]Well, we live in a stye.
[14:14]Yeah, not neurotic.
[14:16]Yeah.
[14:17]So let's talk a little about how the book is illustrated
[14:20]in your experience with the New Yorker
[14:22]and illustrating for so many years.
[14:23]My husband and I were in the airport recently
[14:25]and I misread a sign over an escalator.
[14:28]I thought it said exit for passengers without children.
[14:31]When it was really exit for passengers without baggage.
[14:34]Oh, that's fine.
[14:35]So I was like, how great would that be?
[14:38]So I was like, this is like a New Yorker cartoon.
[14:40]We could have all the happy people going down here
[14:42]and all the crazy people going at the door.
[14:45]But you actually do these New Yorker cartoons.
[14:48]Yeah, so how tell me about how you got into that
[14:51]and what it's like being able to capture a moment
[14:54]and find the humor in it.
[14:56]And just to simply put it in an illustration like that
[14:58]and then have it be all over the world.
[15:00]I've been drawing cartoons for the New Yorker since 1980.
[15:07]It's just drawing cartoons is something I
[15:10]will always drew from the time I was little.
[15:12]I drew before I read like most little kids.
[15:16]I just did not stop, I guess, at a certain point.
[15:20]And when I was around, I always like to draw people.
[15:25]I like to make myself laugh.
[15:27]I think that was the main thing.
[15:29]And I can, you know, I still have some drawings
[15:33]that did as a kid that were kind of like early versions
[15:36]of cartoons, you know, things that I thought were funny.
[15:39]I would make up fake cookbooks
[15:41]and things that, and this is when I was like, you know,
[15:43]10, 11 years old.
[15:44]And then when I was around 12 or 13, I thought like,
[15:48]I think maybe I'm going to be a cartoonist, you know?
[15:51]I always knew I was going to draw.
[15:54]I didn't think I was going to be able to make a living
[15:56]necessarily, but I thought this is really the only thing
[16:00]I can do, I wasn't good at anything else.
[16:03]And so yeah, that's what I wound up doing.
[16:07]And you have been writing for the New Yorker forever as well.
[16:10]And people are dying to contribute to write to the New Yorker.
[16:14]What is it like?
[16:14]You guys have the inside track on it.
[16:18]Is it different than writing for anywhere else?
[16:20]It is different than writing.
[16:21]They give you more space.
[16:24]They are not so interested in selling your product.
[16:28]And the production is really, really good.
[16:33]It's not as if I grew up thinking I was going to be a writer
[16:37]or anything.
[16:38]I, unlike you, I loved being a kid.
[16:42]I thought this is a good deal.
[16:43]I'm going to keep doing this.
[16:45]And people would, I guess I thought at some point,
[16:49]I will wake up and I will be grown up.
[16:51]And I will have children and a station where I can.
[16:55]But I didn't know how that was going to happen.
[16:58]It was just that was what happened.
[17:00]I grew up in the suburbs.
[17:01]I didn't know people who I had no role models for a writer.
[17:07]I thought you were in business or maybe if you were really good,
[17:12]you were a doctor and then there were lawyers.
[17:14]I didn't know there were other choices.
[17:17]And so I got into writing by delaying adulthood
[17:23]as long as I could.
[17:25]I went to graduate school.
[17:27]And I was on my college here in the magazine.
[17:29]And that first woman on the Harvard-
[17:32]Yes, Lampoon.
[17:33]And that fit into with my kind of mentor.
[17:36]I remember as a kid being asked that question that a real kid is.
[17:41]It's like, is everything funny?
[17:43]And I thought, well, yeah.
[17:46]Yeah, yeah.
[17:47]I mean, everything was there to be made fun of.
[17:50]I certainly wasn't going to go the earnest route.
[17:53]That was embarrassing being serious.
[17:55]Yes.
[17:56]And my family, my father was pretty funny.
[18:00]My mother's pretty funny.
[18:01]But we were not serious.
[18:03]We weren't like a mushy family.
[18:05]Yeah, no, we weren't.
[18:06]My parents were, I think they were just too anxious
[18:10]to be earnest in a certain way.
[18:13]You know, there wasn't a lot of, like, we
[18:16]must take time to appreciate the sunset
[18:18]because look at this natural beauty.
[18:20]I mean, they barely didn't really
[18:22]want to go out of the apartment very much.
[18:24]Because really, why ask for trouble?
[18:26]Yeah.
[18:28]You know, in the attitude that, unfortunately, or maybe
[18:30]unfortunately, I agree with or indoor people.
[18:34]Definitely indoor people.
[18:36]But yeah, I mean, Pat, this is one of our big differences.
[18:39]You know, I could not wait to be an adult.
[18:42]I did not like being a kid.
[18:44]I just did not see the point of it.
[18:46]And being an adult is, if I am an adult,
[18:51]if that is really what you know, if I qualify as one,
[18:54]it's much better than being a kid.
[18:56]I still don't like a lot of parts of it.
[18:58]I hate the paperwork.
[18:59]Oh, well, you've heard the paperwork.
[19:00]You have to form that out.
[19:02]I don't form it out.
[19:03]And I do a really bad job, really, really bad job.
[19:06]I hate the paperwork.
[19:08]I'm not really, no, I don't like the paperwork.
[19:09]Just stick, see there.
[19:10]You know, when you're a kid, it's like,
[19:12]you don't have to worry if there are two birthday parties
[19:14]on the same day.
[19:15]It will be taken care of for you.
[19:17]You went to birthday parties.
[19:19]Oh, yeah.
[19:20]Yeah.
[19:20]I went, no, I felt so bad.
[19:22]That was normal.
[19:23]Yeah, yeah.
[19:24]I was trying to get out of that Skinner box.
[19:25]But you know, as they had, they had so many locks, it was, you know.
[19:29]So not only have the two of you collaborated on this book
[19:33]and your other book, why don't you write my eulogy now?
[19:35]So I can correct it, which was also hilarious.
[19:38]And children's books for years.
[19:40]But you have eucalyre melt down, a eucalyre duo band.
[19:45]Yes.
[19:46]How did that come about?
[19:47]And let me hear a little sample.
[19:49]This is very exciting.
[19:50]So we'll talk to you a little about it.
[19:51]Tell me, yes.
[19:52]It came about because a few years ago,
[19:56]I was invited to a wedding.
[19:57]Like two and a half years now, but yeah.
[20:00]That seems like either last week or 10 years ago.
[20:03]Yes, yes.
[20:04]And it was coincident in time and place with the eclipse.
[20:09]And the guests were asked to bring a musical instrument
[20:13]because whoever we're going to have a band
[20:15]and they would, after the eclipse was ended,
[20:17]we would play here come to sun and serenade the wedding party
[20:21]to where they're getting married.
[20:23]I really don't play an instrument.
[20:25]I'm really not musical as you're going to hear in one second.
[20:29]And I could barely clap when you're supposed to clap.
[20:35]But I thought, well, that would be fun.
[20:37]And really, how hard can the ukulele be?
[20:40]So I ordered one on Amazon.
[20:42]And as you said, it's turquoise.
[20:45]And I showed it to rise.
[20:47]And she got one immediately.
[20:49]And we fell in love with playing the ukulele.
[20:53]And then just going back and forth with emails
[20:57]joked around about our illustrious past.
[21:00]Yes.
[21:01]That took place.
[21:02]You might say, like in a parallel universe,
[21:05]where we were a band in the 60s that was very popular.
[21:08]It was called Ukulele or Mel's Down.
[21:10]And we played at Woodstock.
[21:12]We were on that.
[21:13]But we played at Woodstock, but we were facing the wrong direction.
[21:15]Yes.
[21:16]So we were unrecognized.
[21:17]We were in the rest of the night.
[21:18]And my mother telephoned me.
[21:20]So I had to get off the stage in the middle,
[21:22]because I don't want to keep my mother waiting.
[21:23]So there were some problems.
[21:25]And we were on the road, but we kept getting lost,
[21:28]because neither of us has a good sense of direction.
[21:30]But we liked the food on the road.
[21:33]Yes, we did.
[21:35]And except that we being on the road is hard.
[21:38]And we just, there were so many drugs,
[21:42]so much their sweet and low padding at a sweet and low.
[21:45]We went to rehab for my, I have a splend to have it.
[21:48]And Ross couldn't stop eating her vartiches.
[21:51]Yes, and Advil, those were my tunes.
[21:54]You know, it was really bad.
[21:56]But we, in those days, we had, you made out of the trees.
[22:00]Pot holders.
[22:01]Yeah, oh, God, the pot was very fun.
[22:03]That loom, that was great.
[22:05]Yeah.
[22:05]But we hung out with Bob Dylan.
[22:08]We were the ones who told him to go nasal.
[22:10]Yeah.
[22:11]And you told Joni to grow her hair long.
[22:13]Yeah.
[22:14]So that's, you know, we're on Ed told us our dilution.
[22:17]Yes, yes.
[22:18]So we were just writing these insane letters.
[22:21]And then it was like, well, this is really,
[22:23]and then it started to become almost like,
[22:25]you start to be able to very easily fill in the gaps
[22:28]once you have this kind of fictitious structure.
[22:32]It's like, then we realized that we had been friends
[22:36]as children when we grew up in the Ukraine and the Ukraine.
[22:40]And did you know that that is how the Ukraine got its name
[22:44]from?
[22:45]This is the national, the ukulele is the national instrument
[22:48]of the Ukraine, and that's why.
[22:50]Oh, why he tries to make you think otherwise.
[22:52]And so does Portugal say that all, well,
[22:55]because Portugal is actually, I think,
[22:57]where the ukulele originated, not Hawaii.
[22:59]Oh, but before that, it was the ukulele.
[23:02]Yeah, we invented it.
[23:03]Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[23:04]But you guys can just do this all day.
[23:06]We can do it all day.
[23:07]Wait, we broke up in 1991, why should you say that our
[23:11]specialty is rewriting public domain songs
[23:14]and making them worse.
[23:16]So as you know, okay, we didn't really write the song,
[23:21]hang on, slooping.
[23:22]But we were sued in 1991, because we sang it.
[23:26]And truly, you must believe us
[23:29]that it was the typo that we meant.
[23:31]It was hang on, sloppy.
[23:33]Yes.
[23:34]Anyway, we can go on and on and on.
[23:35]We saw merchandise.
[23:36]We have ukulele melt down halibut.
[23:38]Yes.
[23:39]Ukulele melt down cat earplugs.
[23:41]Yes, single sermon cottage cheese.
[23:43]Yeah, so we probably should shut us up
[23:46]because we really could be cool.
[23:48]Yeah, okay.
[23:49]So can I end the videoing this at the same time?
[23:51]All right.
[23:52]Like park.
[23:53]Yes, let's put the line of the look.
[23:54]Let's just get on the floor.
[23:55]Okay, so we'll do this for a few hours, don't we?
[23:58]No.
[24:02]It's really a cigar box with four rubber bands.
[24:05]Basically, it's in toy.
[24:06]And you can keep your keys in it.
[24:08]Yes, or tissues.
[24:10]It's like a little purse.
[24:11]It's an instrument.
[24:13]It's a purse.
[24:14]Okay.
[24:15]On your mark, get set, go.
[24:17]park, park, park, your car, climb to near the curb.
[24:21]Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
[24:23]you just bump into her.
[24:26]It's when do the drinks?
[24:28]Yeah, let's do a drink.
[24:30]On your mark, get set, go.
[24:32]Oh, give us a drink.
[24:36]Not a drink from the sink.
[24:39]But a drink from a western saloon.
[24:45]For me, someone of any old car.
[24:51]Did you do it as we're crooning onto?
[25:01]That's very big.
[25:02]I love it.
[25:03]Okay.
[25:03]All right.
[25:04]I love it.
[25:04]Yes.
[25:06]So are you taking this on the road?
[25:08]Oh, we are.
[25:09]We are.
[25:09]Yes, yes.
[25:11]We can't wait.
[25:11]This is our pub date.
[25:13]We're going on the road starting tomorrow.
[25:15]Yes, that is very exciting.
[25:17]It's very exciting.
[25:18]It's very fun.
[25:19]I hope we don't get lost.
[25:20]I know.
[25:21]Well, when I have my sacred itinerary, that is what, you know,
[25:25]this is, I've talked to you about it.
[25:28]It is our publicist is here from the publisher.
[25:31]And I have to have it written down.
[25:34]Once I have everything written down,
[25:35]it's just like I just go into itinerary mode.
[25:38]And I go into child mode because,
[25:40]and then I'll take care of every single detail.
[25:43]Yes.
[25:44]And so it's all directions.
[25:45]Aside from your book tour to promote this amazing book,
[25:48]what is coming next for you?
[25:50]Are you going to write another one?
[25:52]Have you already written another one?
[25:53]Or why another one?
[25:54]Yes.
[25:55]Any idea on the topic?
[25:56]No, do you?
[25:59]I think about kids.
[26:01]I think about kids.
[26:02]Well, my kids are old now.
[26:04]They're like in their 70s.
[26:07]They're older than me.
[26:08]My kids are important yet.
[26:09]I'm waiting to like 80s or 90s.
[26:12]Yeah.
[26:12]Yeah.
[26:13]I tell you're from mature.
[26:14]Sure.
[26:16]And I've written about kids before when they didn't know.
[26:23]I think there are a lot of people out there, though,
[26:26]with adult kids who sign the humor in that, or maybe grandpa.
[26:30]Well, what am I saying?
[26:31]I don't know.
[26:32]In laws or I don't know.
[26:33]They're my favorite cartoon about adult having adult children.
[26:38]Well, actually, there's two.
[26:40]There's one by William Hamilton, Bill Hamilton,
[26:44]New Yorker cartoonist, where it's two adult children
[26:48]and their parents, and they're at some restaurant
[26:51]and they're having cocktails together.
[26:52]And the mother says, oh, finally, we're all the same age.
[26:56]And the other one I love is by Jack Ziegler.
[27:00]And it's one of those baby books.
[27:02]And you see the hands of the person
[27:05]and the title of the page at the top.
[27:07]It's baby's first gray hair.
[27:09]Mm-hmm.
[27:11]You know, when my first got a gray hair,
[27:13]I think my mother was more upset than I was.
[27:16]And she said, you have a gray hair.
[27:18]And I genuinely believed and told her, it's not gray.
[27:24]It's blonde.
[27:25]I mean, I'm pitch black hair.
[27:26]And I thought I was turning blonde.
[27:28]She said, you're not.
[27:29]Well, I thought I was the first person in history
[27:31]that was going to turn blonde.
[27:33]Wow.
[27:34]Like, maybe that, but if you did, that would probably
[27:36]be a symptom.
[27:37]That's true.
[27:38]And symptoms aren't good.
[27:40]I'm not admiring your hair color earlier.
[27:42]Thank you.
[27:43]Oh, well, it's not exactly real.
[27:45]As a friend of mine wants to say, I love your hair color.
[27:48]Could I get a swatch for my colorist?
[27:53]That's great.
[27:54]That's great.
[27:55]Any advice to aspiring authors or illustrators?
[27:58]Oh, do something else, right?
[28:01]Yeah.
[28:01]If you unless you, this is something
[28:05]that you're driven to do, you probably shouldn't do it.
[28:09]It's, yeah, yeah.
[28:12]Great, that was inspiring.
[28:13]Thank you.
[28:14]Yeah, that's me.
[28:15]We aim to it's time.
[28:16]We hope we're depressed enough people.
[28:18]Yeah.
[28:19]Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
[28:21]Thank you for the live performance.
[28:23]And congratulations on the publications really exciting.
[28:26]Thank you so much.
[28:27]Thank you.
[28:27]Good, this is fun.
[28:29]You've been listening to Momstone
[28:30]have time to read books with Zibi Owens.
[28:32]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter
[28:34]at zibiowans.com to get more updates about episodes like these
[28:38]and also lots of live events.
[28:40]Thanks so much.
[28:41]Today's episode has been sponsored by poets and writers.
[28:44]Visit pw.org to get inspired, connect with other writers,
[28:48]and explore a treasure trove of information
[28:50]about writing contests, literary agents, and more.
[28:53]You can follow me on Instagram at
[28:55]MomstoneHaveTimeToReadBooks.
[28:57]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at TextureSound
[29:00]for the sound editing.
[29:01]And thank you to Morningmoon Productions
[29:03]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[29:06]Thanks for listening.
[29:06]You can always email me at zibiatzibiowans.com.