Episode 661
Stephen Graham Jones, Alex Falcone, and Tropa Magica
Horror author Stephen Graham Jones unpacks the ethos of a "slasher" and why, after more than 30 novels, he can't stop writing; stand-up comedian Alex Falcone admits that he would rather die doing something he hates; and psychedelic Cumbia punk band Tropa Magica perform “LSD Roma” from their EP Y la Muerte de Los Commons. Plus, host Luke Burbank and Elena Passarello share the weirdest fears from our audience.
Stephen Graham Jones
Bestselling Horror Author
Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of nearly thirty novels and collections, and there’s some novellas and comic books in there as well. Stephen’s been an NEA recipient and the winner of numerous literary accolades such as: the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction, the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, WLA’s Distinguished Achievement Award, ALA’s RUSA Award and Alex Award, the 2023 American Indian Festival of Words Writers Award, the Locus Award, four Bram Stoker Awards, three Shirley Jackson Awards, and six This is Horror Awards. He was also a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Eisner Award. Some familiar titles of his may include Mongrels, The Only Good Indians, My Heart is a Chainsaw, Earthdivers, and I Was a Teenage Slasher—with True Believers and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter coming soon. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. Website • Instagram
Alex Falcone
Stand-Up Comedian and Writer
Alex Falcone is a stand-up comedian and writer living in Los Angeles. He started comedy in Portland, OR where he eventually won Portland’s Funniest Person, was twice named an Undisputable Genius of Portland Comedy, and got an ice cream flavor named after him by Salt & Straw, which is one of many things he has in common with The Rock. He’s also appeared in several episodes of Portlandia as one of Fred’s nerdy friends and was asked to do standup on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. But it gets weirder! Alex is the author of a bestselling young-adult romance novel about a mummy called Unwrap My Heart that Publisher’s Weekly called “unfortunate.” His videos on social media have been viewed over 200 million times. Website • Instagram
Tropa Magica
Psychedelic Cumbia Punk Band
Tropa Magica was formed by brothers David and Rene Pacheco in 2018. Inspired by the songs and vibes of 90’s East LA backyard quinceañeras, baptisms, family gatherings and punk shows. The band blends in the guitar and rhythms of 60’s Peruvian Cumbias and 90’s grunge with a neo-southern psychedelic twist that transports the listener into a tropical psychedelic dance party. The Chicago Reader recommends their shows "if you wanna get down to music that has the spirit of laughing in the sun while food cooks outdoors, of gazing up at a starry night sky while feeling small but content, [or] of hugging the people who matter most to you." Website • Instagram
Show Notes
Best News
Elena’s story: “Massachusetts shop offers free coffee for dancing customers”
Luke’s story: “Chicago man reunites with long-lost mother, helps run her bakery in South Shore”
Stephen Graham Jones
Stephen’s new book: I Was a Teenage Slasher
The FFA is mentioned, which is a national nonprofit also known as the Future Farmers of America. It comes up when Stephen unpacks the “cool kids” in his book, stemming from his own experiences.
Luke and Stephen bond over the nostalgia of hair metal music, mentioning the following bands: Tesla, Kicks, Cinderella, and Warrant
Live Wire Listener Question
Live audience members answer the question: What is your weirdest fear?
Alex Falcone
Alex does his stand-up set in front of a live audience.
Station Location Identification Examination (SLIE)
This week’s station shoutout goes to WVKC-FM 90.7 of Galesburg, IL.
Tropa Magica
Tropa Magica play their song “LSD Roma,” which is from their latest EP, Y la Muerte de Los Commons
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Luke Burbank: This episode of Live Wire was originally recorded in November of 2024. We hope you enjoy it. Now let's get to the show.
Elena Passarello: From PRX, It's Live Wire! This week, author Stephen Graham Jones.
Stephen Graham Jones: I've always been a compulsive reader. I have to be reading all the time. And that did not help me socially even a little bit. But...
Elena Passarello: Comedian Alex Falcone.
Alex Falcone: I think if you die doing something you love, that's worse. Because you didn't get to finish that thing you love. That's so sad. I want to die doing something I hate, so at least it's over.
Elena Passarello: With music from Tropa Magica and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burkbank.
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning in from all over America for this very special episode of LiveWire. It's going to be a really fun show, all kinds of stuff happening. First, though, we got to start things like we usually do with a little bit of the best news we heard all week. This right here is our little reminder to stop the show. There's some good news that happens out there in the world. From time to time, we find it for you and present it during this segment. Elena, what is the best news you've heard all week?
Elena Passarello: Oh, this one is so good! But this one involves maybe two of my top ten favorite things on the planet. [Luke: Alright.] Coffee and dancing. I do both every day and I'm not even lying.
Luke Burbank: I believe you, I often see you backstage at the Alberta Rose Theatre drinking coffee and you enter the stage dancing. It's a whole part of the live show experience.
Elena Passarello: I love it. I mean, I think Ellen sort of cornered the market on dancing, but I think we should all be able to do it. [Luke: Yes.] So you can especially do it in Middleboro, Massachusetts right now at the Coffee Milano Cafe. A few days ago, regular patrons to the cafe noticed there was a sign taped to the door that said, if you walk in this door dancing, you're going to get a free coffee, and then they set up a camera. Facing the door, and then they put the results on TikTok with the permission of the patrons, of course. And it's the kind of camera where usually it's like somebody's yelling at a service employee, you know, that camera angle. Yes. But instead of that, the door opens, and like a lady in like sweatpants comes in and she kicks off her shoes and she moonwalks. And then like an older guy in a Christmas sweater does that kind of thing like Hugh Grant in Love Actually where he like spreads his arms and kind of like goes sideways like a crab. A woman comes in holding a baby, but then she grabs the baby's arm and they kind of two-step around, even though she's holding the baby. The baby's like, what? And there's TikTok, which by the way, has gotten eight million views and gotten the Coffee Milano Cafe 10,000 followers. It's just clip after clip of people making their entrance into this place by dancing. And it just, I mean, you can see even from this weird bird's eye angle camera, the way that it completely lifts the mood this already
Luke Burbank: I feel like dancing in public is one of those things that can create so much anxiety for folks, and yet no one else cares about your dancing, you know what I mean, in terms of like, if you're like really skilled at it or not. But it's like up there with public speaking for some people as like something that makes them nervous. But if you incentivize them, you offer them some free coffee.
Elena Passarello: But listen to this. It gets better. So this was huge, of course, and then Coffee Milano Cafe was like, hmm, what else can we do? And right in the middle of Thanksgiving season, Black Friday had not happened at the time of our recording. But on Black Friday, all these other neighboring businesses are going to be posting their own signs to their doors with their own deals involving dancing. So Middle Massachusetts is going to be the dancing-est town in New England, possibly the world. This Friday, which is so exciting.
Luke Burbank: Uh, the best news that I've seen is also bakery related a land. If you can believe that it's a bakery in Chicago down in kind of the south shore area called, give me some sugar, where this guy named Vamarr Hunter, he's 50 years old and he's lives in south shore and he has been going to this bakery for like years at the age of about 35, Vamarr found out that he had been adopted. He didn't know that up until that point. And As can happen for a lot of folks, he became really curious about his birth parents, in particular, his birth mother. He's wondering what was this person like and just wanted to know a little bit more of his biology and his family history. He did one of those genetic testing things, and through a series of events after the genetic testing, he was able to basically zero in on who his biological mother was, and it turns out it's a woman named Lenore Lindsay. Who owns the Give Me Some Sugar Bakery that he was going to. The lady at the bakery is his mom.
Elena Passarello: He was like frequenting this particular bakery and interacting with a woman that he did not know was his biological mother.
Luke Burbank: The owner of this bakery was his biological mother, and he had absolutely no idea until he was 50 years old and did the genetic testing. Turns out Lenore had given a baby up for adoption when she was 17 years old, and had no idea that this guy, Vamarr, who was coming into the store, was her actual son. And it's crazy because there's a photo of them in this article, and like. They have the exact same nose. Like, if you look at them, you're like, of course, this guy is this woman's son. But of course if you don't have that context, like if you've just been living your life and making food at, give me some sugar bakery and dealing with the customers, or if you're Vamar in this, if your the customer, you would never put it together, but this was his mom and it doesn't stop there. They've now created a relationship and he and some business partners are now all part of the bakery. Like help out at the bakery, invest in the bakery uh... His mom when or had some health stuff that she went through so she couldn't actually uh... Operate the bakery so they stepped in and kept the whole thing running
Elena Passarello: Wow. Yeah. Oh, amazing.
Luke Burbank: No update on if they got free coffee or not yeah i don't know i mean it's a great story but doesn't involve free coffee
Elena Passarello: That needs to be a mother-son dance involved in order for that to happen.
Luke Burbank: Well, Vamarr and Lenore being reunited after all those years. That is the best news that I saw this week. All right, let's welcome our first guest on over to the show. He is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of such literary awards as the Ray Bradbury award, the Shirley Jackson award, and critically the Brom Stoker award, which might give you a sense of the vibe of this guy's writing. He's also a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He's authored more than 30 books. How many books have you written, Elena? [Elena: Fewer than 30.] So like together combined, you and I have written. However many books you've written. That's the total between the two of us, which falls far under the number that this guy's written. 10% of that. His latest is I Was a Teenage Slasher, which the New York Times says is imbued with a street smart lyricism that makes even the loftiest observations glitter like knife blades. Stephen Graham Jones joined us as part of the Portland Book Festival at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon to talk about it. Take a listen. Stephen, welcome to Live Wire. [Stephen: Man, thanks for having me.] Okay, I will admit, and this may come up throughout the interview, I am not somebody who's been particularly immersed in the world of horror, and whether it's horror that's written or films. And so I found this book so riveting. I enjoyed it so much. But I learned a lot, including the fact that I just thought the term slasher was a person with a knife who is doing stabby things. But there's It's a very specific, there are rules in the genre, right? Can you kind of lay out some of those rules?
Stephen Graham Jones: Yeah, the slasher is generally motivated by some, not just revenge, but a lack of justice. Like they've had a prank visited upon them that has not been punished enough or punished what they think is enough. So they have to go on a killing spree. And they generally can, they can generally find a class reunion or something like that.
Elena Passarello: A prom.
Luke Burbank: I want to be careful that I'm not giving away too much from the book, so you know, stop me if I get into that territory, but are you comfortable with me mentioning that Tolly Driver is the star of the book ergo, likely our slasher?
Stephen Graham Jones: Yes, Tolly Driver is the eye and I was a teenage slasher.
Luke Burbank: So that's kind of right there on the cover. I'm not ruining anything. What's his story exactly? Like in the beginning of the book, like who is this dude, Tolly Driver?
Stephen Graham Jones: Tali is 17 years old in West Texas in 1989. And oddly enough, I was 17 years old in west Texas in 1999. And he's got a best friend, Amber. He and her are kind of outsiders at the school. They don't fit into any of the cliques. They're not in FFA, they're not jocks, they're popular, they are not rich. But when you stand at the fence outside the party, you kind of develop solidarity with whoever you're standing by. And so they've become close like that. And he goes to a party. And it's a party he's not invited to. He tries to show off how much he can drink and that goes a predictable way. Thank you. He becomes a slasher, he has to get some justice on people. And he doesn't want to, but he has too.
Luke Burbank: I think one of the books is full of surprises, one of the biggest one is that the bullies at the party are in the marching band. Yes. And I want to just, I want to let you know 80% of this crowd was in marching band
Elena Passarello: And the cool kids are the FFA, the farmers are like the hippest dudes in town.
Stephen Graham Jones: Well, that's the way it was at my school in West Texas. My wife is from Houston, and she tells me at her school FFA people were not cool. And that blows me away, because that just doesn't make sense. It doesn't compute. I mean, maybe I just thought I was cool. I don't know.
Elena Passarello: Were the marching band people bullies in West Texas?
Stephen Graham Jones: Well, they weren't bullies, but they kind of strutted around with their big feathers and their tall hats and the epaulets. So yeah, they they made me nervous. They always looked like like they were going to march on me.
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Stephen Graham Jones about his latest book, I Was a Teenage Slasher. More questions about La Mesa, Texas, and also hair metal of the era that is featured in the book. When we come back, this is Live Wire from PRX this week coming to you as part of the Portland Book Festival. Stay with us, we'll be back in just a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are at the Alberta Rose Theatre this week as part of the Portland Book Festival. We're talking to Stephen Graham Jones about his latest book, I Was a Teenage Slasher. Let's talk about the setting for the book, La Mesa, Texas. I know you grew up in West Texas. Did you grow up in La Misa or near it? In Midland, I thought I heard.
Stephen Graham Jones: Midland is the town I usually claim because it's the biggest one close to where I lived, but really I was in Greenwood, which isn't on the map, it's so little, and Stanton, which is on the maps, but it's only 3,000 people, so nobody knows where it is, so Midland is what I claim.
Luke Burbank: How do you feel that sort of shaped you you know to grow up in that environment in that sort extremely rural environment?
Stephen Graham Jones: You know, when I was growing up, the only two options for a guy to work after high school was oil field or cotton-filled. And you made more money in the oil field, but I saw all these upperclassmen coming back from the oil-field missing like three fingers. And I would look at my fingers and think, I like these, you know? Yeah, and so I was gonna be a farmer. That's all I was ever gonna do is be a former. And I think that mindset of, I'm just gonna drive a tractor. Does shape you a lot, because I never thought school was necessary. So I didn't go to much high school at all.
Luke Burbank: Weren't you also, I saw an interview where you said you were also the only kid who did the reading?
Stephen Graham Jones: I was. I've always been a compulsive reader. I have to have to be reading all the time and that did not help me socially even a little bit, but but I think it's helped me in the long run.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, it seems to have in your career. Amber, who is Tolly's friend, is the only Native American at the high school. You are Native American. What was your experience like in terms of other Native American folks in West Texas?
Stephen Graham Jones: There weren't any, it was me and my dad, but my dad was in the Air Force, so he was always in Germany or Korea or somewhere. So I was the only Indian in West Texas as far as I knew. I had some cousins as well, but we didn't go to the same school. So the result of that is, growing up I was called Chief as much as I was called Stephen, and I learned to answer to it, which is weird. But I felt bad, because sometimes like on a Saturday night, we'd need to throw a party at a house and the house was locked and they everybody would say Steve Steve They would call me Steve back then you can break into this you're Indian and I would think And I would really that's what we that's like skill we have but oh, but I always could too. So it worked out
Luke Burbank: Another concept of the genre that I was unfamiliar with until this book is the idea of the final girl. Can you explain what that is exactly?
Stephen Graham Jones: You know, the werewolf has the silver bullet, the zombie has the headshot, the vampire has daylight, and the slasher has the final girl. She's the antidote to the monster the slusher is. She puts a cap on the cycle of violence. She's really, like, nature provides a final girl for every slasher. Slashers occur naturally, but then final girls rise in response because what happens is the slashers get carried away. They start killing people who aren't actually deserving of being killed. You know, I'm not saying that these other people need to be killed either. I mean, preserve the marching band. We need to preserve the marching band at all costs. But the final girl is like, enough is enough. And she's the sole survivor of her friend group. And she kind of starts out bookish and conservative and reserved. But this adventure of watching her pets, her teachers, her family, her friends, everyone die, it transforms her like she goes into a chrysalis and she comes out as this like warrior who. Can put a slasher down, put a monster down. And that's a big thing. And I think what slashers can do for us is they can tell us to all find the final grill in ourselves and push back against the bullies in our own lives.
Luke Burbank: I'm glad that you brought that up because again, as somebody who didn't grow up gravitating towards horror and the whole world of horror that some people enjoy so much and get so much out of, what is it that I've been missing? What is at the core of this that really speaks to people and really is not just about violence being perpetrated on people, but there's something else going on because so many people get so out of this.
Stephen Graham Jones: Yeah, for me, it's not about the gore, the violence, the desecration of everything. The best way to say it, maybe, is in a dark theater like this, when an audience is watching a scary film on screen, if you put a night camera on them to watch their responses, you'll see them all grasp their armrests, and spill their slurpees, and do all kinds of stuff when a scary thing happens. But then, in the seconds following that, They laugh and smile and sigh. And what they're doing is they're being alive. You know, they've experienced the terror and then they're on the down slope of that is life and they get to go back to the world they knew. And that's why I watch and read and engage horror. It's to be alive.
Luke Burbank: So it's that sort of build up this moment of intense fear or strong experience, and then the kind of relief after it? The relief is what it's all about, man. If I could bottle that, I would be in business. Well, I mean, you are in the many, many books that you've written. What do you think the key to, because you've been so successful with this, what do you the key to writing horror is when you teach students at Colorado, how do you teach it, and what is the secret?
Stephen Graham Jones: You know, I think if there is a single secret to horror, it's write what you yourself are afraid of. Don't do a survey and find out that people are scared of spiders and mummies and fire, and then try to stage some mummified spider that's on fire coming for you, you know? That's just gonna be like vaguely scary, but like what nightmares are you having as a writer? What are your issues with the world? What are you anxious about? Find a way to embody that dramatically in a story and then you're cooking.
Luke Burbank: There are so many musical references in this book, which I was loving because I think we're roughly the same age. So when you're talking about Tesla, there are just so many moments where you reference a song, you reference the character hearing a song. Did you have to like go back and double check and make sure that your memory of like when a song was actually out? Because this book is set mostly in the past. It's what, 17 years ago? It's set in 1989 and it's told.
Stephen Graham Jones: And it's told from 2006.
Luke Burbank: So did you have to actually really make sure that you were doing stuff that was historically accurate?
Stephen Graham Jones: No, those songs, that hair metal era is ingrained in me so deeply, I never have to second guess it at all. It's like you scratch me and it just bleeds up kicks and Cinderella. Warrant. I love Warrant, man.
Luke Burbank: I was wondering if you and I don't know if this is how you thought about it or not but you as a person of your age writing as a teenager in the voice of a teenager with other teenagers is that part of why you said it in the period of time when you were a teenager so you didn't get into this kind of false attempt at trying to sound younger than you are.
Stephen Graham Jones: Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I was talking to a friend about 15 years ago, Will Christopher Baer, some of y'all may have read him, and he said, he's like a real contemplative, thoughtful guy, or he can be, and he's said to me, hey, Stephen, you're really good at that teenage angst stuff, aren't you? And I thought, wow, Chris gave me a good compliment. And then I'm walking home later that night and I'm thinking, was that a compliment, you know? I'm But as for why Tolly is 17 in 1989, it's that I kind of sneak wrote, I was a teenage slasher. I was supposed to be writing The Angel of Indian Lake, which was due really soon, but... And that's part of this Indian Lake trilogy? It is, yeah. It's the third book in that trilogy. And, but then I thought, you know, why not make it really difficult for myself and sneak another novel in?
Luke Burbank: Okay. This actually brings me perfectly to the next question. You've said something like, you feel like if you're not writing, you're stealing air.
Stephen Graham Jones: No, that's the only reason I've ever been able to think I might be on this earth is to write fiction. So when I'm not doing that, then I feel like I should hold my breath and let other people use this air because I'm doing nothing good with it anymore.
Elena Passarello: That's how you write 30 books.
Luke Burbank: Plus.
Elena Passarello: Plus!
Luke Burbank: 30 plus that the producers hastily told me because in the intro it says you've written 30 books. They were like we we are sorry to inform you Luke. He has written more than 30 books. What is a typical day like for you in terms of your writing practice? Like how are you because I just want to say again, I loved this book. Like this is not a genre I'm particularly familiar with but this is such a well-done book. It's not like you're just Jamming out these books to get to a certain number. There's so much obvious care and thought that goes into him like How are you actually generating this much good writing? Just low standards, man. I give you points for comedy. But I disagree with you, having just read this book.
Stephen Graham Jones: I wish I had like a daily writing practice. I keep waiting to grow up and have a schedule, but it never happens. I wake up and if I wanna watch a Rockford Files, I'll watch the Rockford files. And then I listen to some Bob Seeger, then I go ride my bike. And then, I remember, oh yeah, I'm a writer. And so, I go write for a couple hours real fast, then I got back out on the trails, but. I never, like some writers will tell me, they get up at 6:30, they start writing at 7, they go till 11, they eat lunch, then they do errands in life the rest of the day. And I think, wow, that must be nice to have that. But I just, I'm more of a binge writer or an opportunistic writer. Just any wedge in the day in which I can put words on the page, I sneak away around the corner and I'm doing that. Or I'll be talking to somebody and doing it in my head, which doesn't make navigation of conversations very easy. But I just... Yeah, I just love to write, and I'm always doing it. And I like to, maybe the way to say it is, do y'all remember when like Goblet of Fire came out and everybody was standing in line at the bank reading it and sitting in their car in traffic reading it? That's how I like to write. I like to fill my day with this novel I'm writing, this story I'm reading. So every spare moment, I'm just cooking away on it.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, you must, in writing so many of these books, you must have to imagine so many, let's just call them end-of-life scenarios. Are you running out of ways for people to die in these books?
Stephen Graham Jones: No, I can't write enough books for all the ways I've got for people to die. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Thank you. Thank you very much. This is Live Wire, we're talking to Stephen Graham Jones.
Luke Burbank: All right, Stephen, certain people, by which I mean me, have sort of historically had a hard time handling the genre of horror because of maybe it's a little too scary. But I think really the truth is that we need to give people like me a little credit because we are all dealing with the terrifying reality of human existence every day. And since you're an expert on the genre of horror, but also a person in the world, we wanted to give you two scenarios. Okay, one inspired by the horror genre. The second inspired by the everyday horror of modern life on this planet. And then we'd like you to try to decide which is actually scarier. It's a little game we're calling Grave Situations. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that music stig, it's kind of an obscure little number. Okay, so these are two situations. One that seems to come up in horror films, one that comes up in real life, you have to tell us which one is more terrifying to you. Listening to a couple of twin girls speak in complete deadpan unison, or listening to the news first thing in the morning.
Luke Burbank: What is more horrifying for you?
Stephen Graham Jones: Easily the news, man.
Luke Burbank: Really? Do you get ideas from the news ever? Like, do you see a story or read a story and think, oh, that could actually make sense in something you're working on?
Stephen Graham Jones: You know, if I'm reading, like, weekly world news. I'll get some ideas from Batboy. Yeah, or like, Lumberjack, like a Bigfoot kept me as a love slave, that kind of stuff, you know? But no, the news, I think I hide in fiction from the news actually.
Luke Burbank: Oh, interesting. You know, it's funny because like this week for this show, I was doing a lot of reading and what I realized it was displacing for me was my obsessive news consumption that I'm doing right now just to try to quell anxiety. And I've never been more relieved to hear about somebody just being killed in a swimming pool because it has nothing to do with persuadable voters in Pennsylvania.
Stephen Graham Jones: You're totally right, but you know the wonderful thing about engaging, like in anxious times, engaging in a horror story, novel, novella, play, film, poem, whatever, is that whatever form you're in, it has an ending. It's like you walk through a dark tunnel and there's some light at the end and you're moving towards it and you get there. It may be a train, but still you get. Whereas this news cycle is never ending. You never get out of the tunnel. I think that's why horror has been on the rise these last few years. It's because horror stories have endings, and we like the idea that this horror we're in might have an ending.
Luke Burbank: Well, on the subject of horror slash real life, which is a more grave situation for you, Stephen? Seeing blood come up your shower drain or clogging the toilet at someone's Christmas party.
Stephen Graham Jones: Uh, Christmas party, I guess, yeah.
Luke Burbank: Although, during sound check we were running through these, and Elena, you seem to have a good system for unclogging the toilet.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, I know how to do it. Any toilet, any place, I can unclog it. I have lived on this earth for 46 years, and I've been in a lot of scenarios, and I have givered my way out of all of them.
Luke Burbank: Would you take, so you would take clogging a toilet.
Elena Passarello: I am the final toilet girl.
Luke Burbank: All right, here's the last one. What is a more grave situation? Having your car break down in a remote location near an old abandoned farmhouse or having a person in a car right behind you impatiently waiting while you try to parallel park.
Stephen Graham Jones: Oh, what's scarier? I guess the parallel parking. I'm a pretty good parallel parker, but I don't feel any fear being out in the country with a broken down truck. Because that's like every other night of my life growing up.
Luke Burbank: You know your stuff, Stephen Graham Jones, you're exactly right. That's how you play Grave Situations. The book is I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones. Stephen, thank you so much. Thank you. That was horror writer Stephen Graham Jones, very likable and friendly for someone who writes horror, Elena. I mean, I know that's probably kind of like a stereotype for me to buy into, but as like a non-horror consumer, I didn't know what to expect.
Elena Passarello: Such a nice, friendly dude. He could be friends with Mr. Rogers, but he also writes slasher fiction.
Luke Burbank: Exactly. The latest of which is his new book. I was a teenage slasher. We recorded that interview as part of the Portland Book Festival. This, of course, is Livewire. I'm Luke Burbank, that's Elena Passarello. Each week we like to ask the Live Wire audience a question related to the episode and inspired by Stephen Graham Jones' book about a Teenage Slasher. We ask the audience a question. Elena, what do we ask them?
Elena Passarello: We asked them, what is your weirdest fear?
Luke Burbank: Ah, okay. I mean, I would say being slashed by a teenage slasher, not weird, very...
Elena Passarello: No, normally.
Luke Burbank: Very normal thing to be fearful of. We had our intern, Andrea, ask some of the audience at the Alberta Rose Theatre to answer that question. And here are some of their answers. This is what Ellison said, Elena, that Ellison was weirdly afraid of.
Ellison: It's just not that weird, but I am like, very afraid of things with more than eight legs. Like eight legs is my cutoff. I love spiders, but like get the centipedes away from me.
Luke Burbank: So more than eight legs for Ellison is the problem.
Elena Passarello: That's right. The rare nine legged bug is just really messing them up.
Luke Burbank: I find the extra legs, like if we're talking about a millipede or a centipede, it's almost like, um, visual ASMR for me. Like it makes me feel relaxed because it's so undulating. Like think about the mechanics of all of those legs, you know, working together in unison. I think there's something kind of beautiful about it.
Elena Passarello: Nope, nope, nope.
Luke Burbank: Nope, nope, nope. You're with Ellison. Nope, no, no. All right. This is something Cole says they're weirdly afraid of.
Cole: Of not being able to get everything on my grocery list and having to go to a second grocery store.
Luke Burbank: I don't know if you caught that. It was a little loud, but not getting everything on the grocery list at the first location. I share this fear.
Elena Passarello: So where I live in Corvallis, Oregon, we joke about how you cannot get your entire grocery roster covered. Like the grocery stores are conspiring against one another to have like everything you need except for that one bag of cheesy poofs that you like. Like it's, you always have to make multiple trips. Cole, do not move to Corvallis.
Luke Burbank: It's not the place for you. All right. Here is Nick's answer to the question of what is something you are weirdly afraid of.
Nick: Hitting a tree while downhill skiing okay yeah I know that it's not likely to happen but I'm scared of that.
Luke Burbank: Okay, first of all, this is how Sonny Bono left this planet. So I think it's a pretty reasonable fear.
Elena Passarello: Some other celebrities too.
Luke Burbank: I don't want to blame the scared person here, Nick, but have you noticed that when you're on the ski slope and you look around, there's a lot of trees. It's kind of a big mountain thing. Like I think that was a very rational fear.
Elena Passarello: Well, I mean, it would be irrational though if Nick is afraid of hitting a tree while skiing and has never been skiing in his life.
Luke Burbank: You know what? That's a really good point. I assumed Nick was like an avid skier or something. All right. Thank you to everyone who answered our question about weird fears. We really do appreciate it. Thanks to our intern, Andrea, for collecting those up. This is Live Wire from PRX. Our next guest achieved the rare and coveted trifecta of Portland comedy during his time in Portland. He won the title of Portland's Funniest Person. He appeared on the TV show, Portlandia. Where I think if I remember right, he showed off, he has one of these like insane abilities to spin a pen on his thumb. And I believe his character was just spinning this pen on his thumbs in this way that was totally remarkable. The other thing, the third leg in the stool of Portland comedy trifecta-ry is that he's had an ice cream flavor named after him at Salt and Straw, the famous Portland ice cream. Holy crow. Yeah, right? Uh... And then since then he's also been up to great things he's appeared on the late show with Steven Colbert uh... He released a comedy album which called Vanilla he's got about a half a million tick-tock followers which includes me he's now based in Los Angeles but he made a triumphant return to the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon to make us laugh once again this is Alex Falcone.
Alex Falcone: Thank you, good to see all of you. Tell you guys what I've been up to. I've trying to get somebody pregnant recently. Actually, wait, let me go back, sorry. I am married. My wife and I dated all the way to completion, and we are, we're at that interesting place where we've been trying to make a baby, and here's my main takeaway, if you've never tried it, harder than they said it would be in sixth grade. Yeah, they made it sound super easy. It's taken us a while. Long enough, we were at a doctor's appointment, and I asked the OB, I was like, what are the actual odds of this happening? And she's like, well, remember, if you hit the peak day, which remembers one day in a cycle, which is a little bit less than a month, so it'll move around within the month, right? But then also it can move around within the cycle, but also, sometimes it'll skip a month. But also, you'll never know if it's the right day until several days after it. But if you nail it, 18%. That's what she said. When I was in sixth grade, they were like, there's a 90% chance you'll get pregnant if you go near a hot tub. One of you is lying. I don't know which one it is. I'm getting frustrated about it. My wife is very calm. She's very cool about it I'm. Getting frustrated. Everybody's advice to me is don't be frustrated. That's what everyone tells me. They say the same thing. And they sound like they're trying to be nice. But everybody says, they're like, just relax. Just don't think about it, put it out of your head. It'll happen when you least expect it. And that sounds nice, but that's not actually that good. When I least expect is when my wife is having a quiet night at home in Los Angeles. And I'm here in Portland with You Find People. I'm not expecting it right now. I thought I was at least going to be there. Obviously, that number was real, by the way, that 18%, that's what she told us. And part of the problem is that we are old, right? I'm in my late 20s, very late, I'm 40. And so we have an increased level of difficulty. There's actually a term for it, if we get pregnant now. For anybody over 34, do you guys know what it is? All of you, yeah, geriatric pregnancy. That's what they call it. They say geriatric, if you're over 34 they're like geriatric pregnant. And what I think of that is, it's kinda mean. You could have picked any word. You already make more money than me and you make me wait in that little room and then when you show up, you roast me? That doesn't seem, could have called it classic or something. I don't know. Do I at least get a senior discount? What do I? It's rough. It's weird, and that's so weird because 35 is a very young age. We all agree, right? And you go in there and you're 35, the doctor's like, you wanna get pregnant? Look at this, Moses over here thinks they're gonna have a baby. Oh yeah, you want it? Look, I'm a doctor, not a witch. I don't know. I've got Jury Duty coming up. Very excited about it. I got jury duty, and I love jury duty. It's my favorite thing. I like anytime someone wants to know my opinion. So that's a perfect place. I have great opinions about, you know, like movies and restaurants. They probably saw my work on Yelp actually. And they were like, we gotta get this guy in here. He's tough, but fair. Let's give him a few crimes to look at. The whole premise of, what a fun, powerful feeling. The whole promise of a jury duty is like, everyone else worked hard, but I get the last say. It's so cool. Like, there's at least two lawyers, which is like seven years of school each, at least, and then there's a judge, which is two lawyers sitting on each other's shoulders with a trench coat, and then they put on a show of all their research, right? They bring in experts and crime labs and witnesses, and they take all of that and they put it together and they're like, well, we've done everything we can. Let's see what Alex thinks. That's how it works They're like, we've done everything possible. Let's bring in one comedian and 11 retired people. We're gonna get to the bottom of this. I think if you die doing something you love, that's worse. Cause you didn't get to finish that thing you love. That's so sad. I wanna die doing something I hate, so at least it's over. I want my last thought to be like, someone else is on bathroom cleaning duty. That's what I want. I don't think anyone wants to die doing what they love. Like every once in a while, you see like there's like a news story, someone's in a skydiving accident, his friend is like, well, at least he died doing what he loved. I don' know, man, I bet he loved landing safely and going again. I'm not sure you really... I don't think you really listened to your friend when he talked about his hobbies. That's what I think. I think for me, the perfect way to die would be in traffic, not in a car accident, just sitting there. That's what I want. I, you know, I live in L.A. The traffic is terrible. I want it to be like Monday morning, 9 a.m., obviously. I'm not going to let them take my weekend, but like Monday Morning, I'm in traffic. Guy behind me honks, even though I can't make all these cars move, right? And then I'm like, you what? I don't actually want to work today. And then, I just check out. Right, great news for me, I'm not in traffic anymore. What an awesome day, even better, the guy who honked for no reason has to wait way longer. This is a new shirt by the way, I'm trying to dress better, thank you, it's so hard, it's stressful because when I go to buy clothes, when I look at clothes online, all of the pictures are of the clothes on hot people and I don't need to see what it looks like Uh huh people, that's not where I'm gonna put it. When I need tires for my Civic, I don't look at pictures of Ferraris. I don' care. I don't need to see what a shirt looks like on a 10. I need a shirt that turns a six into a six and a half. That's my market. I don't wanna see any of these hot models. I wanna see models with good personalities. That's what I want. You know how sometimes on closed ads it'll be like, he's five, nine, and he's wearing a medium or whatever. I want mine to be like this guy is five, 11 and a half and he can juggle. That's I want, I want... Show me pictures of guys who tip well. That's the market I'm in. I, I'm gonna tell you one more thing. I was in, I got to go to Europe this summer. I was very lucky. Got to go to Paris and London this summer, it was wonderful. One of the things that's great about leaving the United States is seeing things that I took for granted that I just assumed we were better at than the rest of the world. Because there's stuff that we're very good at, right? We are very good at barbecue and putting people on the moon and. We are less good at trains and healthcare. You know, it's like interesting to see the differences. But one of the things that blew my mind is, did you know that every other country is better at us at cleaning up after they go to the bathroom? Did you know? Everywhere we went had bidets and we are still using tree pieces like the cowboys. What are we doing? The thing that they came up with was using water to clean. It's brilliant. It's really good. We're still Dry Dragon, like it's the 1800s. Other places are using water and it's so much but water is the way you clean stuff right it's like if you got someone else's poo on you you're changing a diaper a little bit gets on your arm you wouldn't say hand me a fast food napkin right you would You would want some moisture involved. If you got mud on your truck, you wouldn't be like broom, broom, broom, right, you want? When you turn the thing in the shower, towels don't come out, okay? I think the reason we don't do it is just because the word bidets is too French. That's what I think, right? It just doesn't sound cool. We don't want bidets everywhere. But you know what we are into as a country? Power washers, right. And what is a bidet? But a power washer that lives in your toilet. That's all it is. So if we rebrand it, right, if we called them pooper soakers or ass blaster, you would sell. Sharks, I'm asking for $200,000 for 15%. All right, my name is Alex. You guys have been so wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, it's always great to have you.
Luke Burbank: Alex Falcone everybody. That was Alex Falcone, right here on Live Wire, his comedy album, Vanilla, is available right now to listen to. It's Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We have to take a very short break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, we are gonna hear a song from the psychedelic Cumbia punk band, Tropa Magica. More Live Wire in just a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. All right, it's time for that part of the show where we play a little station, location, identification, examination. This is where we quiz our esteemed announcer and master of not just the trivial, but the information based. Like Elena, you know so much stuff. I'm always impressed.
Elena Passarello: I can get any stain out of anything.
Luke Burbank: That by the way could be another game at some point on the show
Elena Passarello: Stain location identification.
Luke Burbank: Here's where we ask Elena about a place in the country where LiveWire is on the radio. She has got to figure out where we are talking about, maybe with a little help from the live crowd at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon, because that is where we recorded this session of station location identification examination. Elena, are you ready? [Elena: I'm so ready.] It's the birthplace of a writer named Karl Sandberg, and his home is now a historic site. I will be very honest. I was googling this side stage, who Carl Sandberg was.
Elena Passarello: Oh no! The City of Big Shoulders!
Luke Burbank: Well, this is why I'm not the person competing in station location identification. You knew this? You know who this is.
Elena Passarello: Yes, I have to tell you, I don't think I'm gonna get this right, but there's a Carl Sandberg home in North Carolina, it's where he died, and I went there with my family when I was a kid and a goat peed on my shoe.
Luke Burbank: And that's right, it's Goatshoe, Wisconsin. That's the place we're looking for. Wow, you already know way more about Carl Sandberg than I expected. But I don't.
Elena Passarello: I don't think he's from North Carolina. I think that's where he retired and died. So is it somewhere in Illinois? [Luke: It is it is.] Writes a lot about Chicago
Luke Burbank: And I won a Pulitzer for a book about Lincoln. So it is in Illinois.
Elena Passarello: Weehawken?
Luke Burbank: It's that's New Jersey, but close. Uh, it's Galesburg, Illinois. You know Galesburg.
Elena Passarello: It's a lovely town. It's on the Iowa River.
Luke Burbank: Galesburg, Illinois, where we're on the radio on WVKC. So shout out to everybody in Galesburg tuning in to LiveWire, okay. All right, before we get to our musical guest this week, let's have a little preview of what's going on on the show next week. We are going to be talking to the writer, Kari Ferrell , who was known for a period of time as the hipster grifter, not sure if you remember that. She got that nickname by becoming a sort of a infamous swindler in New York city in certain hip social circles. That was back in the late aughts. Eventually. Kari ended up pleading guilty to forgery and identity fraud. And now she has written a memoir that's actually quite incredible. It's called, you'll never believe me. Uh, then also we've got some standup comedy from Zak Toscani. He's going to give us some insight on what it feels like to be a recovering goth and also, um, how trips to the dentist keep getting weirder for him. Then we're going to hear some music from the sweet soulsters and honestly, one of the most spry people I've met for his age. The one, the only Ural Thomas & The Pain that will be our musical guests next week on the show. It's going to be amazing. So make sure you tune in for that one. Our musical guests this week are two brothers who were inspired by the songs and vibes of 90s East Los Angeles backyard, quinceaneras, baptisms, family gatherings, punk shows. The Chicago reader says that their shows get down to music that has the spirit of laughing in the sun while food cooks outdoors. And gazing up at a starry night sky while feeling small but content.
Elena Passarello: Mm, mm, mm.
Luke Burbank: Should I read that again so we can all just bask? [Elena: Yeah, I want to live in that review.] Please. I want to go to there as we say. Anyway, this is Tropa Magica, who joined us at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon. Take a listen. What song are we gonna hear?
Tropa Magica: This first song, we wrote it. We took a trip to Mexico City when we started this band. We went to the pyramids and It actually works better if I play like kind of give it some context. [Luke: Yeah, absolutely.] So we took this trip down to Mexico City. We went to the pyramid and Somebody gave us two little magical pieces of paper. [Luke: Uh-huh.] We you know, so we were walking around and all of a sudden colors started swirling all over us And we heard these like Jaguar sounds. And then we heard like this very beautiful whistle. And that's what inspired this song. And what's the name of the song? It's called LSD-Roma.
Luke Burbank: Ha ha ha ha!
Speaker 10 [Tropa Magica performs "LSD-Roma"]
Luke Burbank: That was Tropa Magica, right here on LiveWire performing the song LSD Roma from their newest EP, Tropa, Magica y la Muerte de los Commons. All right, that's going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks to our guests, Stephen Graham Jones, Alex Falcone, and Tropa Magica.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our Executive Director and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our Technical Director. Leona Kinderman is our Assistant Technical Director and our house sound is by D. Neil Blake. Ashley Park is our Production Fellow. Andrea Castro-Martinez is our intern.
Luke Burbank: Our house band is Sam Pinkerton, Ethan Fox Tucker, Ayal Alves, and A Walker Spring who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Eben Hoffer and Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid.
Elena Passarello: Additional funding provided by the James F. And Marion L. Miller Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank members Nancy Whittig of Portland, Oregon, and Jody McKenzie of Portland Oregon. Also, very special thanks this week to the amazing Amanda Bullock and the Portland Book Festival.
Luke Burbank: For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to LiveWireRadio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
