Everyday Wisdom on Love, Sex, and Relationships | Leah Garchik & Jon Carroll | Talks at Google

Hello.

Thank you for coming. It's my pleasure to introduce John Carroll and Leah Garczyk as part of the Authors at Google series. John Carroll has been writing for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1982 and is best known for his moderate to liberal politics and columns about his cats. He is also known to be the founder of the Unitarian Jihad movement, which has over 43,000 hits on a Google search today. Leah Garczyk has been with The Chronicle since 1984 and has had the best gossip column in San Francisco, according to a Chronicle readers poll. In addition to juicy celebrity gossip and printing hilarious quotes overheard by readers, Garczyk reviews and sometimes writes books and as a panelist on the KALW quiz show Minds Over Matter. Her new book, Real Life Romance, is a collection of overheard quotes about love, sex, and relationships. And just a reminder that we will have time for Q and A afterwards. And please use the microphone, which will be over there so that our VC sites and YouTube will be able to hear your questions and answers. And that's it. So please join me in welcoming John Carroll and Leah Garczyk.

Okay, this is the first challenge. Getting into the chairs. Thank you very much. Please, none of you get old. It's a terrible idea. Second, where the hell does this go? Behind me in my lap. Oh, yeah, that's going to look good. Thank you. Hi, Leah. How are you? So you write a gossip column about. Is it mainly, like, international celebrities or is it local celebrities or who are we gossiping about?

Whoever. I feel like there's kind of a rule of thumb that the farther away they are, the nastier I am, out of pretty much cowardice. So I love to write about the royal family in England because they never. The queen never calls the complaint, but I'm pretty careful if it's a local person. And how would you define your subject matter?

Everything I care about all the time. When I came to the Chronicle, I had already worked in publications bureaucracies for 15 years, and I knew something about how they worked. And I knew that I should have sharp elbows from the very beginning so that my territory was not closed off. So I purposely wrote about a wide variety of things. I wrote serious columns about politics. I wrote funny columns about politics. I wrote about my cats. I wrote about my trips. I wrote about my children. I wrote about everything I could think to write about so that nobody could say later, oh, no, you can't write about that. That's not what you write about. So it's gone. That's worked out pretty well, and it keeps me from being bored. It's five columns a week, which is for me 270 columns a year, which is about two mystery novels worth of text per year. So it's important not to be bored with your own voice.

I remember I actually it was said, Kim said that I started at the paper in 84, but that's when I got a problem. I actually started the paper as a part time temporary center clerk in 72. So I remember watching you pace out that territory. Do you? I sometimes feel that when I'm sort of low on material that it's a better column because I have to be more adventurous. And do you find that or what's your nerve wracking process?

Well, the nerve wracking process, which is a version of the question, where do you get your ideas from? Is it varies. Sometimes I have three ideas. I don't write columns ahead, but I have three ideas and I just know what they're going to be. And sometimes because they're good enough ideas, they come out really pretty well. But sometimes when I don't know anything, I mean, I have sat down at 9:30 in the morning not knowing what I am going to write about that day. And in fact, tomorrow's column, if you want to go to sfgate.com and look at it tomorrow, tomorrow's column is a product of pure desperation. I had no idea what I was going to do. So, Leah, Yes. I understand that you recently had a problem with Chinese food. Care to talk about that?

Oh, I would. I love Chinese food. First of all, I want to say on the record, I love Chinese food, all kinds of Chinese food, Hunan Chinese food, and whether it's spicy or plain. And the reason I'm saying that with such vigor is that in the time of the Olympic torch, I'm sure even down in Mountain View you heard about the Olympic torch in San Francisco and all the fuss about that. So somebody wrote me what I thought was a really funny letter saying that he thought that as a protest against China's actions in Tibet and also allegations about lack of human rights in China that people should not eat Chinese food during the Olympics. So I got on the day that ran. I'm so glad to see you smile. That means a lot to me and you'll hear why. So the day that ran I got a little response. And then at first when you get a little response you think oh one nut. But then it saying, well, that's not very nice. That's a really racist thing to say. How dare you So I respond kindly. You kind of don't want to say to a person, come on, didn't you get it? It's a joke. Lighten up. Don't you have a sense of humor? But that's what you're thinking, really. Anyway, the first responses were very nice. And then I heard from a phone message from an outraged man who said he was a Chronicle advertiser and he had a Chinese restaurant, and how there I tell people not to patronize his Chinese restaurant, and he was going to pull his advertising. So then I thought, oh, God, is he going to call the publisher? Because then I might, in fact, get into trouble. And the straw that broke this camel's back was the third letter was from. Or maybe by that time it was kind of 10 letters from somebody on behalf of Chinese for Affirmative Action, which is a group that. That I've long sided with on most things, saying, what kind of terrible thing is this to say? So I decided to throw myself out there at the mercy of the public and apologize. But I couldn't quite bring myself to do it in a truly apologetic way. So I wrote about saying that this was a joke. And then I said, in fact, you should eat more Chinese food in the Olympics, and even if you're in the mood for a burrito, you should eat Chinese food. And then I wrote, if there are Mexican restaurant owners who advertise in the Chronicle particularly, this is a joke. So I didn't get a single response, actually, to that. I was hoping that Chinese affirmative action would write to me and let me off the hook, but they didn't. So have you ever had to apologize, John?

Yes. When I get really, really nasty email, really rageaholic email, I write back and sometimes even send either you keep on thinking, butch, that's what you do well, or feel better now, which of course, enrages them. Once in a while, I even send it because they've said things about me, and they deserve it. A long time ago, when Nordstrom's opened in San Francisco, and that was about a block from where we worked, I now work at home, so I don't. I barely see the office at all. And I have no idea even whether Nordstrom's is still there, although I assume it is. And it's great. The. I walked up there, and as you'll recall, Nordstrom's was very, very much into personal service. That's what separated them out from all the other department stores. So I went up on opening day, and I went into the men's section, which, you know, these Circular elevators. I went to the men's section and there was a guy in a tuxedo playing the piano, which is not a normal retail experience. And then there were a bunch of salesgirls kind of standing around near the guy in the piano. And you basically went up to one and said, wear the ties. And she would take you into the back and you know, serve your needs in some way. And so I thought to myself as I was writing back, this resembles nothing so much as a bordello. I mean, you know, there's the guy with the piano and there's the lineup of girls and there's the whole. I mean, as I understand, bordello is from seeing them depicted in motion pictures. And so I wrote that I thought it was funny and I did it very tastefully and I did a little, you know, ha ha, this don't really mean, you know, thing. And Mr. Nordstrom or his equivalent was on the telephone to the publisher at 6:30 in the morning. And the publisher was on the telephone to me at 6:45 in the morning. And it was agreed that I would not write about retail establishments for a while because there are one of the great sacred cows in newspaper advertising. People think, oh, I'm so brave because I take on oil companies. Well, you know, our, the revenues that we derive from oil companies are minimal. The revenues we derive from retail, big retail advertisers are substantial. And so that's what they worry about. And that is the last instance of censorship from the Chronicle that I have had. It is actually wonderful that they let me say all the really peculiar stuff I say and just say, oh well that's John, and let it go.

Well, I have to tell you something about bordello. That's a great metaphor for everything. So I, in my job at various times, I do write about celebrities and lots of times people will come through town pushing a book or some project and they call me and I usually say, I don't mind being second try everybody else. Maybe you can get a whole feature because I'm just going to write a paragraph or so. So about a year ago, I think Gage Lease was in town, you know, and he had written a book that was a collection of essays that he had. Anyway, one of the essays was about Elaine's, okay, the famous New York restaurant where apparently they're really nasty to you unless you're one of the Elaine's insiders, which Gay Talese was. So I went Gay Talese couldn't get anybody at the Chronicle to interview him. I went to his hotel room, actually, to interview him. And there's this whole false friendship that arises between the interview subject and the person who's doing the interview. And it's a matter of sort of civil discourse. You say, hello. And by the end, if the conversation is going reasonably well, it's likely it's happened more than once. I'm sure to you, too, that the person will say, oh, you know, if you're ever in New York or whatever, especially New Yorkers. And I was raised in New York, but they think they're so cool, and we just live in the sticks. And if they say, oh, do you ever come to New York? It's like asking Dorothy if she ever comes to Oz. So Gay Talese, at the end of this interview said, oh, if you ever come to New York, here's my number. Give me a call. You know, it would be nice to see you. So I said, you know what? I'd really always have wanted to go to Elaine's, and I'm afraid to go myself. Would you. Could I go to Elaine's with you one night in New York? And he said, oh, absolutely. Okay. So the piece was published, and I took great care with it. He's a writer, and he's a kind of celebrated writer, and I knew he'd be reading it, and I wanted him to. So I really, you know, worked hard on my metaphors and illusions and whatnot. And then maybe nine months later, we were going to New York, and I thought, do I call him? You know, is he going to remember this conversation? Well, I did call him, and I began with this whole backward statement saying, I'm just going to call you this one time. I'm not a stalker. I understand that this was said at the end of an interview. Maybe you don't want to do it if you don't, and I will understand and I'm not going to bother you. And you might not even remember me. I'm Leah Garczyk from the Chronicle in San Francisco. And he said, of course I remember you. You wrote something nasty about me. And what I'd written was, when I went to his hotel room, the door was open, and he was like so many authors on these trips. He was doing a radio interview before me. So I got to sit there and listen. And he was just totally turning on the charm, saying to the interviewer, oh, well, that's a very interesting question. Nobody's ever thought about that before. Oh, you are really well read. So I wrote that it was no reflection on Gay Talese, but Instead, a reflection on the whole interview process. But I felt like a John waiting for. To be finished for the next trip. He didn't like it. We never did go to Elaine's. You know.

I have a segue for that. You want to segue for that? Gaeth Leese, who wrote a really good profile of Frank Sinatra called Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and a book about the Apache Indian ironworkers who were building the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. I mean, he's written a bunch of stuff, but he kind of hit the sexual liberation thing head on as a sort of very button down Italian boy and went sort of nuts and lived for a while in a place called Sandstone, which was a free love commune up in Topanga Canyon. Coincidentally, I was assigned by Esquire to do a story on Sandstone, the free love commune in the Topanga Canyon. And I went up there and it was. There was a lot of nonsense about the kind of philosophical underpinnings of two orgies a week and walking around naked. There was a lot of. And so I carefully took notes and everything. And then I was invited back for one of the orgies. And usually guys have to bring girls, but I was Esquire and Esquire didn't need to bring a girl. So that was nice because I didn't know anybody who would come with me. So I came up. No, no. So I went up and I was greeted at the door by a 5 foot 2 inch redhead naked person who was the wife of the founder of Sandstone. And she was going to be my hostess for the evening, clearly. And so. And it was. Everybody was mostly naked. And so, because we were, you know, I was a participant journalist, I wasn't, you know, I was going to do that. So I got naked and it was. We had a spaghetti meal.

Where'd you put your notebook?

What?

Where'd you put your notebook?

My notebook. I carried it, thank you for asking. I didn't have. I mean, you know, I put it down from time to time and it was a spaghetti meal and there was a whole, like a buffet thing and there was, you know, salad and a big bowl of spaghetti and garlic bread, so. Oh, and no wine because they were against drugs. So I sat down and I'm sitting on a couch naked with a plate of spaghetti in my lap, which is not something I was accustomed to and I'm not that good an eater anyway. And so I would get the spaghetti and some would fall and there would be this kind of rivulet of red through my chest hair and then of course it would fall. And even though I was in a place that would understand my attempting to retrieve the spaghetti in some way or another, I failed to. Till I got up and then I got it. And meantime she was talking about life insurance, which was her day job, and wondering if my loved ones were adequately covered. So I was, you know, so I was, you know, and I was. I was gearing up for an erotic experience. I mean, I had heard about orgies. I thought they. This, but it didn't, you know, that's not what it seemed to be. So afterwards, we went downstairs to the ballroom. Joke, the ballroom. And there was like, music playing, except it was Herb Alpert in the Tijuana Brass, which is not my idea of. You know, it's not Barry White. You know, it's like that. And there was like one. One psychedelic slide with a naked person kind of dancing in front of it. And there was a very bored woman on my right who was saying, o, o, o, O in sort of miming. Not miming, but pretending to sexual excitement, but clearly to any rational observer, not experiencing it. And I was sort of right next to her. And I was with Barbara Williamson. That was her name. Barbara Williamson. And Barbara Williamson, because, remember, I wasn't John Carroll. I was Esquire. And Barbara Williamson was determined to give Esquire a good time because they wanted ink. And, you know, that was clearly the way to do it.

So.

And I was just as clearly not involved in this experience because of the spaghetti and a whole bunch of other things and all the other people, because that turned out not to be my thing. And so nothing was going on. And I realized that Barbara Williamson wasn't going until something happened. I mean, that was, you know, that was her mandate for Esquire. So I closed my eyes and ran through, like, the. A list of fantasies, you know, the. Really the top. You know, just one after the other, not saving any of them, you know, one after another until I got to the point where, you know, sufficient stimulation had been received that I could initiate the act. And I did. And then I faked premature ejaculation because it was really the only. Because nothing was going to happen. Believe me, nothing was going to happen. And then Barbara, who felt that her mission here on Earth had been completed, and she said, thank you very much. And I said, thank you very much. And then I. I left as quickly as possible. I'm the guy who fled the orgy at 9:30 because it wasn't working for him and wrote a story that sort of had Those elements and other elements in it as well. But that is the interesting thing is that is the first time I have told this story in public because I found a way to tell it without making it too dirty.

Did she ever respond to the story? Did you mention her? I mean, did she know she was in the story?

Well, she probably did. They were looking for their names, but no, I got no response at all since the story was mixed because I quoted them all their stuff about Teilhard de Chardin, you know, the kingdom of the competent or whatever the hell they were talking about. And confident naked people. That's what we need running the country. If only. George. No, no, I don't want to go there.

Did this story get a. So it was published? This was When? In the 80s?

No, 70s.

So did it get a lot of response?

No, no, I have no idea why.

That'S what I thought.

We were jaded. Everybody was jaded. Just another orgy story. I mean, I, you know, I really don't know.

I thought I was going to ask you whether you experience the newspaper phenomenon that I do, that you write something that you think is going to be controversial or that will get people head up in some way. And you almost go to sleep kind of excited about the next day, you know, thinking, oh, my email box is going to be full with. And splat, there's nothing. And you think nobody's reading it at all. And then something else that will be totally inconsequential. People just jump all over. Did you. My latest, most recent experience with that was I'd gone to a dedication ceremony for a monument for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. It's new, it's in San Francisco and it's the first national monument to that in the country. And Charlotte Schultz is the head of protocol for the city of San Francisco and the Spanish ambassador was there. So Charlotte Schultz brought her husband, who was the former Secretary of state. And this is a crowd of old lefties, very old and very left. I mean, there were veterans that were there and they were. So when Schultz was introduced, everybody went nuts, booing and you know, he just kind of looked around and they sang the Internationale and he just kind of looked around like nothing was happening. But then I started listening to the speeches and from some of the veterans and they were actually, they were speeches about people in a first world country. These terms I know are politically incorrect nowadays. But a first world country going over to fight in a third world country, risking their lives for the principles of democracy. And I thought, oh, by God, George Shultz is sitting there and he's thinking, oh, that's what we're doing now in Iraq. You know, in a totally back. I mean, I don't agree with that, but I'm sure he thinks that his. The idealism that led to the Iraq war or Americans making sure that people's rights are guaranteed around the world is the same as the idealism that went into the Spanish to us going over there to fight in the 30s. So I rushed over afterwards and asked him and he made a little oration about that and I wrote it. I couldn't wait to get to work the next day and write it because I kind of, I mean, I thought it was true and I really thought it would get people angry. Zilch. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But in a column, I think the next day I had interviewed Lewis Lapham, who's another editor actually, and I think I did this wrong. I wrote, I mean, my note taking system is terrible and as I get older, less comprehensible, less legible to me. So I wrote Criteria when I should have written Criterion and I quoted him. But I'm sure it was my fault, not his. I must have gotten 50 letters about it. You know, mostly abusive. So. I mean, all abusive, actually.

Oh yeah. There is a subset of the grammar police and, and related matters that, I mean, you can, you know, they don't care what's going on in the country. They don't care about the economy or the housing crisis or something like that. But if you don't use the correct Latin ending for something, it's all this is good. The lights go on. The lights go on. Then you've got a major thing on your hand. The Chronicle, in its wisdom has decided that media is now a singular word, that it has lost its Latin root. And however, I, who by God took four years of Latin and want to get something out of it, continue to use it in the plural. And apparently I had to get some special dispensation from way up high in order to use it in the plural, since we're not. Since, you know, it's not considered correct. But. But I got a. One of the strangest things that happened to me was on 9 11, I'd written a column on the morning of 911 and then I had gone with my wife, driven down to Stockton, or started to drive down to Stockton for a cactus sale. We are, among other things, big cactus collectors and low care. Sure, you know, they've got those little spikes, but boy, don't leave them alone for three months. They don't care. And there was a call from my copy editor saying the word had gone out that everybody had to write something about 9, 11. And I had no idea what to write. I didn't have any special insight. Nothing was known. Nobody was going on. I could say, gosh, it's a shame, but kind of everybody had covered the gosh, it's a shame, end of the story. And, you know, and Congress was on the steps singing God Bless America and all this stuff. And I didn't know. I didn't know what to write, but I had to write. It was like, you know, you don't have a choice. You're covering this story whether you want to or not. So I wrote something that seemed to me at the time unremarkable, that in times like this, of national disasters, there is overreaction. There can be overreaction. I mentioned Manzanar and the Japanese interning during World War II and several other historical examples and asked people to remember that and to remain calm while the perpetrators were being, you know, while the investigation was going on. Well, I was a traitor. I mean, I've never been called a traitor before. I've been called an idiot, but never, never a traitor for saying, remain calm. I mean, it was like, no, no. Patriots are getting really, you know, irrationally excited. Why are you remaining calm? And so there was like two weeks there when I was on everybody's enemies list until, in fact, people calm down un peh. And I got back and now my position is sort of majority view. And I don't thank God. I mean, I was on the right side of that one. That was nice.

But on the important things now, John and I were in touch last week because I got a call from a woman with a pleading tone in her voice, and she asked me if I could get in touch with my esteemed colleague, Mr. Carroll, and please tell him to write some more about his cats. Because they were her favorite columns because she liked to read them aloud to her cat.

Yeah, well, the cat people are. Now I'm a cat person, you know, I really am. I've had cats all my life. I love cats. I write about cats. I'm not ashamed of my cats.

I.

But, you know, it's like baby pictures. People send you baby pictures of their, like, you know, five day old baby. They all look the same. There's nothing to see and you have to be polite and all that. But it's a five year old. I mean, it's a five day old baby. It's nothing. It's a little bald head and a, you know, thing. Well, people send me pictures of their cats. You know, I don't want to see their cats. I don't care about their cats. Really what I'm writing about, if I'm doing it well, is I'm writing about what it's like to be a cat owner and the sort of essence of the interaction between cats and people. And I don't expect people to care about my cats. What I hope is that they will see something of their experience in my writing and there will be a little shock of recognition and I will have done my job. Same reason you write about your family. But there are cat people and then there's that cat site with the odd diction that somebody will know the name of cats. Yes. Which is fabulous, but doesn't have anything to do with cats. It has something to do with somebody's extremely interesting mind using cats as the taking off place.

But I could point out that among those of us who write about, not you, but me, very small things, you could sort of convince yourself that any of those very tiny things is useful because it's a metaphor. Right. So I once wrote a whole Sunday column about whether diet cola attracted ants when you spelled it, which got actually differing scientific response around the country. But almost everything is a metaphor. Which brings to mind, I want to say, about a piece of correspondence I got not from the cat lady last week. It was from a woman and she just started with no introduction as to why she was writing this. But she said that her son had thrown up on his pillow, on a pillow that she owned a few weeks ago. And since that she used to have a bed and breakfast. This was in Berkeley. She felt that the pillow had been, over the years, much drooled upon. These are her exact words. And so that it was time to clean it. So she put it in the washing machine with a tennis shoe. This is a household hint.

Did you know that that's what you're supposed to do, a clean tennis shoe.

But I guess you buy them just for that purpose.

Those of you with your laptops open.

And the pillow came out totally fluffy and wonderful. And she ended by saying, isn't that a metaphor for life?

Drop my water. Yes, it is. Absolutely. Well, I wrote about three weeks ago, I wrote about. Because it was big allergy season. And I wrote a column, I get terrible allergies, about how all the acacias were out. And, you know, it was terrible. And I was going around stuffed up and, you know, there wasn't enough claritin in the world to do anything about it and all of that. Well, it turns out that the acacia has gotten a bad rap just because it's so visible and it comes out in the early spring. People think it's the acacia. But oh no, the Society for the Protection of the Reputation of the acacia is all over my case, suggesting ragweed and other pollens that I should apologize to these blameless plants. And I might still, I don't know. But you know, that's so, you know, don't, you know, don't be mean to your acacias, I believe is the message.

Yeah.

So I had in mind to sort of talk about. I mean any discussion I could have is low tech because I'm basically a low tech person. But to. I mean we are at Google here and you. I remember John was writing about the. Well before I ever signed on, before I ever had a password, you were writing about being on the web.

I got online in 1987.

But do you feel.

Thank you so much.

Right now, I mean, we both use. I particularly, who am in the office, am working at a fairly frenzied pace. I'm on the computer all day, so I'm pretty agile on it. But I feel like the world of blogs and all that is just whizzing by me and I kind of almost made the conscious decision to read a good novel instead of the blogs that I just feel like it soothes my soul more. But do you, you who were out there early, do you feel as though you're in the middle of.

Well, first of all, I think the world of blogs is whizzing by everybody. There are. What's the. There's some insane number of blogs. Does anybody know the figure 3 billion or. I mean there's some. I mean not all of them are maintained and a lot of them are dummy sites, but there's just a lot of blogs. And I don't think anybody reads all the blogs, even going through the links and even spending all day wasting time online, which no one of course here does. But no, I go to the same 8 or 9 or 10 blogs and follow some links and that's all I can handle. And if somebody sends me a link to a really good blog, I hesitate to bookmark it because if I bookmark it then I'll have to go to it and there's another 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back. And some of them, I mean, there's a hotel management blog which is actually interesting because strange stuff happens in hotels. And you need to know how to manage it. But no, I don't know. The well was a text based BBS which was initially at 300 baud, which was like, you know, letter by letter typing. You had to be really dedicated to the idea of conversation. But it was recreational typing and it was an amazing experience to have all of these strangers out there in cyberspace talking to you and everything. And then it's the same thing that's happening with Space Book. Space Book, right. Facebook Space Book. Go get that URL Facebook People think that it's private because you're in your room and it's all late at night and they somehow think that it's private. Well, we had a sex conference on the well and I used to sort of think thought it was private. And initially, of course it kind of was. I mean there were like I don't know, 100 people online. But you know, this stuff lives forever. And I go back and look at postings that I made a long time ago that I wish I hadn't made now but because you know, my daughters are all there and I don't want them to see that. But. But it was fun to watch the development. I remember the first column I ever wrote about email. I had to spend so much time explaining what email was that the actual point I was going to make about email was like the last paragraph because nobody was. You type this on, it goes through phone lines and it was. Didn't work. So do you go to blogs a lot?

No.

Aren't there celebrity blogs?

9 or 10 that you read are amazing. I look at, there's a gossip column for media called Romanesco that I look at every day and that's pretty. Oh, and you know, years ago, I haven't smoked in 25 years, but years ago when I wanted a break between work then I would have a cigarette, you know. Now if I need just totally clear my mind, I look at something on ebay, something that I collect. It has the same function. But I'm interested and I hope we have some questions about that, about, you know, where the newspaper and Google Meet. Because I've been. John is working at home and his garden is beautiful and I'm working in a sea of a lot of empty desks. So it's been sad. I mean I feel fairly secure and my kids are out of college and we've lived in one house for a long time. But it's been really sad to see colleagues go and the newspaper try to redefine itself.

I did write a Column suggesting that Google buy a newspaper. Yeah, specifically buy a newspaper.

Talk to us this afternoon while we're.

Here because they've got a lot of money, which is good, and they seem to respect the creative process and they need newspapers for their search engines. So why not just eliminate the middleman and you know, go directly to the. So, you know, would you rather have Rupert Murdoch or Google? I don't think it's a choice. I mean, I think that's easy. But Google never writes, it never calls, you know, terrible.

I think, I mean, I think what's kind of what, what I miss, I mean, when I, I talk to people around town who are even younger than my age group, which is mostly everybody, but they, it used to be that people would. The newspaper was a starting off place for a daily conversation. And the analogy, I think it was like, like going to a ball game where part of the pleasure is watching this thing and everybody responds to it. This one thing that's happening. I mean, yeah, you remember other games and some people are educated about baseball and some aren't, but everybody says, wow, what a catch. And what do you think of that? So a newspaper kind of set the agenda for a daily conversation. Now there are so many different sources of news, which is a healthy thing. I mean, it's not good for all our news to, to be filtered through one pair of eyes. But that opportunity for a community conversation seems to me is going well.

There is a community conversation, it's just sort of links. And there are different communities in my view. There are different communities that form and reform amorphously. But have you guys ever typed in Complaints choir into the YouTube search field? Yeah, that's just wonderful. And that's something that two Finnish artists did and it went around the world with complaint choirs from a wide variety of places. And that could not have happened in any other era. And it's a wonderful idea. And also if you do that Complaints choir, try Birmingham first, because I think Birmingham is the superior complaints choir. Should we do questions now?

Yes, it's on. Okay, so if you have questions, use the microphones, please. And I'll just say right now our books are late on their delivery, so I'll be taking this is what the book looks like. Leah can tell you more about it, but I have a sign up sheet with me. So after the talk, just come see me and I'll do a random drawing of the first book. 30 people that sign up.

Excellent.

If you wind up with a book and you want me to sign it, just send me an Email, you'll have to buy a paper because my email address is in the Chronicle. And I'll send you a piece of paper with a signature and a personal inscription.

Only the mic in the middle is on.

Okay. She was first. Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. I have a statement and then a question. My statement is that I left journalism to go into software, but I'm a writer still, and I left it when I realized that newsrooms weren't going to be the grubby, swivelly leather chair places anymore where they looked no different from the software offices that I would have to work in. I realized I could make more money, which I'm embarrassed to admit, but all of my friends who stayed in journalism basically ended up at the Chronicles. So I know a lot of your colleagues, and I feel as sad as you do about their being laid off one by one. Brilliant, brilliant people, writers and reporters. So that's my statement.

Sad.

However.

Thank you.

I think community is happening in other ways. So I'll write you an email about that. My question actually is for Leah, and it's not about media and Google. It's actually about. I'm completely fascinated by gossip conflict columns. And I wonder, when you sit down or you think about your work life, your professional life, what do you think the function is that your column serves? Like, how do you frame it for yourself?

Thank you. Yeah, I used to hate the word gossip column because the column. More from a sort of people in the news column that wasn't local because Herb Kane was alive and I was forbidden to write anything local. And then it sort of. That title gossip column came right after the merger when Phil Bronstein was the boss and he wanted pretty much a Hollywood gossip column. That was my big celebrity era, and I kind of cringed at that name. But then I read some sort of National Geographic type story that said that apes like to look at each other doing things, and two of the apes would chatter at each other watching a third doing things. So I was able to rationalize that a gossip column is kind of talking about a community standard, talking about a news thing, something that happened, but setting some kind of moral or emotional standard. That's not to say I say, tsk, tsk. It's my kind of bottom line for an item is something that elicits some kind of emotion. Usually. I mean, this is a generalization. Of course. I break rules all the time, but. So I think it's okay to not be a mean gossip column. I'm not a mean gossip columnist. I'd probably be better read if I were. But when I started doing, or a few years after I started, somebody called me one day who had actually been the news director at one of the big network stations here and said that two anchors on another station were having a fair, or rather it was, I think, the sports guy and the weather woman. And I had friends at station B, so I called them and one of them actually said to me, when I asked her, is that true? She was silent. So, aha, it's true. But she said, do you want to ride? All she said was, do you want to write that kind of column? And it really pulled me up. So I don't want to write that kind of column. It's different if some evangelist who's preaching abstinence to everybody else or Elliot Spitzer has his pants down. But otherwise it's kind of live and let live.

I'm not sure about Eliot Spitzer. I think maybe he should have been allowed to have his pants down in privacy. But that's me.

Yes, Yes. I want to thank you both for coming. I've been reading you both for many years. I am also a tech writer here. We're friends. I also help run the gay employees organization and I've been with my divested partner for 25 years and an activist on and off and involved in a lot of things. And John, when you get to gay subjects in your column, you come across as more pro gay than I can do most days. You, in this very non defensive matter of fact, common sense, you just don't understand why anybody is so obsessed with it. And I have to tell you that over the many years, particularly when I was coming out, but also when I am feeling really down and defensive by the rhetoric that's coming out of wherever it's coming out of, you have been. This is more of a thanks than a question, but it has been a real pleasure. I mean, I like the Mondegreens. I like a lot of the things, but it's been a real pleasure to have that kind of column appearing. And it's made a real difference to have straight people writing columns like that. I want to thank you. I don't read the cat columns. I'm a dog person. But other than that, thank you.

Thank you very much for that. I appreciate that. I've written about gay topics for a long time, but when my daughter came out to me 10 years ago, it took on a particular urgency. And now her partner, who is from. She's not African American because she's from Canada And I said, well, African Canadian, do you say that? And she said, no, you know, black folks will do. And I said, okay, black folks. She's from Trinidad. And so she is over the dinner table, enlightened me to a whole host of other issues that are going on. And, well, you know what I'm. I could launch into a screen. But thank you very much.

I guess I just really echo the previous comment. I found your column. Well, I've been reading your column for years. In fact, for probably about five years, your column in the crossword puzzle was the only reason to buy the Chronicle. And then it would just. The rest would go in the recycling bin. And I found your column on September 11th to just be remarkable in its immediacy, the perspective that you had. I cut it out and saved it. And also your marriage cactus column, I think, is one of my favorite ones as well. So it's just you've been a really centered voice, I think, to have in a daily life, in a daily environment. So when are the books coming out?

There is one book I'm actually getting. This will not. This will disappoint many of you. I'm actually getting money to write a cat book. That's what the people want. My wife thinks that we're going to, you know, that's going to be our annuity. We're going to retire on the damn cat book money. I don't think so. But thank you for. Thank you for those kind words. I mean, I really, I can't tell you, I never have any idea how to take compliments. I really, I'm totally bad at it. But I'll take it home with me and tell other people about it. So thank you.

Leah, forgive me, I have not been reading your column very much. John, I have been. I was introduced to your column by a friend in the mid-80s, I think. I don't think I realized that it was fairly new at that point. So I have a comment and two questions, and one is I joined Bennett in thanking you for how out you are. You're out as the parent of a gay person. There aren't a lot of people, parents who do that. And it's a really big deal. And thank you so much. So my comment is one is, what's your usual lead time? Because I read that 911 column, too, and it was out on like 9 12. Is it usually a day?

No, it's usually two days. But because they wanted everybody to write about, you know, I had to do it. No, but it's usually Monday for Wednesday, Tuesday for Thursday, all of that. If I have something that is up against the news, I can change that reasonably easily. But it's in the date book section, which is put to bed slightly earlier than the front page. So they want it. You know, that makes it easier for them. And it's still. You'd think that would help the extra day, but it don't.

Well, no, because I am also a tech writer, so I understand about that. My other question is, I also have read a Der Lara's column in its various forms, and I remember a comment she made once that her daughter would tell her she couldn't write about certain events, and then she would bribe her daughter. You know, please, can I write about this? I'll give you 20 bucks. And it seemed to work. So I'm curious to know if you've ever had that kind of flack from your kids.

Well, I believe that paying your children to write about them is a terrible precedent, and I have not followed. Yes, and here's something weird. My daughters are now 37 and 41. They are both. They are both married. One of them lives in Montreal and is a circus performer and is now pregnant. Oh, we're so excited. And the other one has my. Is the mother of my grandchild and lives three doors away from me with her partner. So I still cannot write about what it was like when the boys. And in both cases, it was boys then when the boys came to the door when they were 14 and 15, because it was so embarrassing. I mean, this is now two decades, and they don't want the stories. And the stories are great because you open the door and there's the kid, and the kid doesn't know that you know, but you know that you know. And you know what he's after, you know, what's on his. His mind. But he's pretending. No. And of course, he's Mr. Carroll this and Mr. Carroll that, and you give him as much trouble as you can because, you know, ultimately he wins because he takes her away. And I think there's stuff there, but I can't write it yet. Who knows when I'll write it, maybe posthumously.

Could I insert something there? You weren't talking to me, but it's about that. I was always amazed at Adair being able to do that because I found I have two sons, and they're 31 and 34. And at times not so much in this column, but in, as I said, I had a Sunday column for a while that was longer. They really felt that me writing about some episode of their youth, even if I saw it as a positive thing, was telling a warm and fruit fuzzy family story, was. In fact, at one point we were all asked to write about the new ballpark. When the new ballpark opened. Do you remember that? And I wrote against it. Actually, I was in favor of Candlestick because I loved the camaraderie of facing the elements at candlesticks. But it was a nice column about the family and everybody bundling up and joking with each other. But they felt as though by me being a writer, that I then made the official record of whatever happened. And they really don't like that. So I very rarely mention them. It took me a long time to understand what that was about.

But I think it is true that you're imposing your reality on their experience and that's weird. On the other hand, one of my daughters is in show business and will take any mention she can get.

Yes, I've been reading both of you for over 10 years and I really appreciate your column, so thank you for that. And one of the reasons I keep reading the Chronicle is partly for the local news, but even more so for the local sense of community it can bring out. I mean, I know that I don't know you, probably nobody who reads you knows you, but we all read you. And I think it sort of gives a shared sense of dialogue, is, as you were saying, something to talk about or just a perspective to chew over, a sense of how are my fellow San Franciscans thinking and feeling. So I really appreciate that part of it. I read the Chronicle on the shuttle in the morning. So I open it up and I read it. And as I finish the sections, I will often put it out there, offer it to people around me. And I've noticed that most people in the shuttle are under 30. You would think I'd offered them a half chewed sandwich. They look at me with sort of a vague mixture of alarm and pity that I'm actually reading a piece of paper as they're typing on their laptops. And they say, no, thank you. I get my news online, so I say okay, and I tuck it away and I shuffle off the shuttle with my walker.

Which is covered by Medicare, fortunately for you.

Good thing there are good benefits at Google. Then I think to myself, how can the newspaper, or is there any one community forum like a newspaper now in the Bay Area, sort of keep the sense of community and community dialogue? So I appreciated what you were saying earlier. So that's sort of part of my question for you. Is there's two parts. How can the community sort of still use the newspaper in any way or columnists outside of a newspaper to kind of pull together that sense of shared dialogue or ideology. And second of all, I know that the Chronicle has done a whole lot of readers react, readers poll. It drives me out of my gourd. I want to know what you say. If I want to know what the guy who wrote in the reader poll says, I can turn to someone at the bus stop and say, what do you think about John Carroll?

Well, you know, it's interactive. That's one of the buzzwords we use. Anytime anybody wants to promote a bad idea, they say it's interactive.

Yeah.

So I'd love your response to what.

You think of that mechanism, whatever that. Well, my, it's my belief that newspapers are moving from a mass media to international niche media. And I don't think they're dead. I think it's nonsense. I think they will be a niche media and as a niche media, they will, they will be one of the ways of engendering community. I also think that online is finding ways to engender community because they are realizing that it's missing. And I think there are a lot of sort of extra, extra media ways, which is to say meet space ways of doing the same thing, community meetings and self help groups and all of that stuff which I think are on the rise. And also I have an enormous number of readers in high school. I get notes from them all the time. It's not as though there is some cutoff and everybody stopped reading newspapers at 30. I have lots of people who are interested in that and the people who are interested in that seem to be be people who are interested in reading in general who read, you know, literature and things like that. And also people who are politically active because if you're politically active, that's where you're going to get the news that matters ain't going to be on television.

Also. What I want to say is that we just had these huge long series of meetings in which we were briefed on new presses that the Chronicle is that are being built right now in Germany and all their capabilities. So actually this was being outsourced. Good news for us though, that, that the, that money was, I mean, millions of dollars being invested in these things. But we're going to have the capability of smelling ink, ink with odors. Take that online news.

Yes.

Hi, Lisa. Hi, John. Well, we've got a disproportionate number of technical writers in line here. There's been. I know of a couple of people who've talked about having a local complaints choir. And, you know, if we had one locally here at Google, it would start with, they just don't feed us well enough.

Oh, right, yeah, I had one of those awful lunches you can be forced to endure.

Yes.

Slop and slime. So in the community building thing online, newspapers and other outlets all over the place are trying to have commenting, and I'm wondering if you're. Yes. The rolling of the eyes, would you comment? Oh, it's so interesting that there are levels of comments. Okay. So you get emailed comments that go directly to you. So somebody has reached the end of the story and read the address and actually type the address into their computer. And those are a certain level of thoughtfulness. Actually, I would say the most. Well, those are very thoughtful, but even more carefully thought out are the people who are still writing in longhand because they actually write in sentences with capital letters and everything. But then there are phone calls, which are often outraged. But the lowest level is the people who comment online. And it's really amazing, especially as what I was talking about. When you write something, I mean, I'm not quite sure whether we're expected to look at those or not, but I look every few days to see what's gotten comments. And if you write something that's gotten any, they'll be so, oh, I wrote something about Robin Williams and his wife divorcing. This is not my favorite kind of story, but I was first, actually, so there was a reason for me to do it. And he's a local guy and it was something. So it was written pretty straight down the middle. No, I didn't make fun of it. I think it's a sad thing when people are divorced. It's the kind of story that there are lots of comments and maybe fully 20% of them are nanu, nanu is the comment. I mean, it's just really depressing. And then another 20% is people talking about their own dating adventures going back and forth between them. And then another 20% is, who cares about this news? You know, why the hell would you be interested in writing this? And then another 20% was, I think I'm at 80 now saying, you know, why didn't you put any spin on this? Why did you just write it straight? It's just very depressing to see those comments.

Yeah. My experience on the. Well led me to understand the nature of competitive vitriol, and I don't. I really don't. They're writing for each other. You know, they're not writing for me. They don't care what I think. They're writing to top each other. I adore my email correspondence and I try to write back and all of that. And those are the people, people that are important to me. I have not yet read my comment section on any column. I get enough stuff from email and from the well and from actual human beings that I can see. And, you know, that's plenty. You don't want too much feedback. Makes you crazy. You know, you get enough feedback and, you know, you have no idea what you're doing. So I'm. I'm not impressed with that interactive feature of newspapers.

Yes, thank you for coming. One of the things that I noticed, you know, you were talking about how newspapers are changing and stuff like that, sometimes, especially like a Sunday paper, it feels like the newspaper is this thin wrapper around this giant ball of ads. And so there's, you know, it's really, it's really just an ad delivery system.

You mean the ads that pay our salary? Yes. Oh, we hate those.

Google is the same way. That's where we make all our money. So there's got to be some kind of synergy there somewhere. But I just wanted to say that I appreciate both of you. And the Chronicle especially always struck me as a very literate newspaper. I came from Montana, so maybe my standards weren't really high, but Stanton Delaplaine, Charlie McKay, the serialization of Tales of the City, Armston Muffet and stuff like that. And I was wondering if you think that tradition is going to continue as.

Long as Lee and I are here. The literacy is going to continue. You know, people who are drawn to newspapers now, a decreasing but real number are drawn because they enjoy writing. And actually because there is less at stake with newspapers in some senses, there are lots of people who are writing reasonably kind of COVID guerrilla peculiar prose out there. And, you know, it gives me great hope. And the Sunday newspaper is one of the places where you find all sorts of experimental prose lurking in the home section. Seriously? Yes.

I couldn't resist adding to the parade of tech writers coming to the microphone. You talked about the sort of false intimacy that sometimes comes out of an interview. And I see this in the blogging world as well, that people who read a blog sometimes feel like they're very close friends with the person who's blogging, even if the person who's blogging doesn't know they exist. And I wondered if you could either or both of you Talk about how that works for you from the columnist perspective of your readers, feeling like they are friends of yours.

Personally, one thing that's happened a few times and really delights me because it makes me think that it's real, is hearing from someone and writing back and forth a few times and then maybe having lunch with the person. And I've actually become friends with some of the people in my line of work, as opposed to John's. There are a lot of people who want things. They want publicity. So I have a lot of faux friends. And that's sort of fraught with problems, because sometimes I'm wrong. I think they're real friends and they don't, and I feel taken. But it is possible to really, really interact and make a friendship. You know, somebody's letter will have a certain spark in it or. And then there are somebody. Some people, contributors whose sense of humor actually. People whom I've never met and probably won't ever. Whose sense of humor is there? You know, what's kind of sad to me is nobody's ever going to be Herb Kane. You probably all know who Herb Kane was. And so I've kind of tried to do some of the same functions, but in a different way. But he had this really merry band of people who absolutely worshiped him and contributed to his column. And the issue after he died was what to do with them. You can't. I mean, I felt respectful. These are people whose names I've read for so many years, but. And it's easy enough for me to change, to use my own style in writing and have a clear vision of what I want to do.

But.

You know, that meant turning down their contributions a lot, and I felt bad about that. So that's a kind of delicate dance. It's been.

I have a merry band of people who worry about me. It's very. I wrote about. I was diagnosed with diabetes seven years ago, and I wrote a bunch of columns about that, which I think was a good. I mean, got good information out to people, and I think it got them tested and all that. But God help me, I can't write about having a dessert somewhere for seven years. Every time I write about ice cream, it's like, should you really be doing that? Have you checked your sugars? It's like, please. Every time I go on vacation, it's like, are you all right? Did they fire you? Are you dead? You know, it's like, don't. So that's a little weird. I'm glad they care, believe me. But the way the Chronicle has been operated the last four or five years has induced some paranoia because people just keep disappearing. It's like Argentina. They just, you know, go away. I think we are out of time, and we would like to thank you all for coming. You have been fabulous.