Telekasandwich
As always, Tom Scharpling is a great source of encouragement. After congratulating me on my accomplishments thus far in the realm of interviews, he reminded me that I shouldn't lose sight of my own writerly aspirations. Coincidentally, I had been thinking the same thing and will be unveiling some new short pieces very soon.
Until then, please busy yourself with these Q and As with Jay Johnston and Jerry Minor , who you know from their work on Mr. Show and their various endeavors, which include Morel Orel and The Sarah Silverman show for Jay and Carpoolers, Crossballs, SNL, and Trigger Happy TV for Jerry. Here's a bonus chat with Jay about his SuperDeluxe show The Snuz Brothers and what he thinks about physical comedy.
My two final pieces for Gothamist went up and they were with The Sklars , who share some great New York stories, and Dave Housley , one of the founders of the Lit Mag Barrelhouse, who discusses his tremendous short story debut Ryan Seacrest is Famous . In addition to being a writer and editor, Dave teaches business writing at a college, so I wanted to ask him about critical thinking, which is a term thrown around a lot at school that I don't quite understand.
In my community college experience, there has been a great deal of emphasis placed on "critical thinking." It's never really been delved into what it was, but professors make it seem like it's a special, privileged sort of thinking that not everyone can do. Since you teach, do you think you could elucidate this concept?
I'm so new to it, literally 8 weeks in, and we just really started talking about critical thinking. For me, I think it just means thinking for yourself -- a lot of people, especially in an academic setting, I think, feel like their job is just to believe everything they read, or that anybody tells them. What we talked about in my last class, actually, is how to evaluate sources of information and try to decide for yourself whether they're legit and what you think about what they're saying. Whether the folks who are running the show at the college think that's "critical thinking," I have no idea.
That probably is what they're talking about, but my teachers certainly make it sound like it's one step away from telekasandwich, which is the ability to turn things into sandwiches with your mind. While you can't use your brain for turning anything into a hoagie, you can certainly focus your attention om this interview with writer Christian TeBordo about his terrific novel We Go Liquid.