'Psych' star James Roday

Psych is a show meant to be enjoyed with some pineapple-derived foodstuff in hand, seeing as (according to the pineapple references made every episode) it must be the favorite fruit of somebody in production. They certainly appeal to the main character, Shawn Spencer (James Roday), a hyper-observant fake psychic who, along with his assistant and best friend Burton "Gus" Guster (Dulé Hill), works as an official consultant for the Santa Barbara Police Department and gets into as much trouble as possible. The second half of the third season has returned, and I recently got to talk with James Roday by phone about the upcoming episodes and the amount of effort put into the various hijinks sprinkled very liberally throughout the show. Enjoy.

Hello?
Hello.

Hey, it’s great to meet you. How are you?
I’m good. Good morning.

Good morn—oh, right, where you are it’s, like, six in the morning.
It is. It’s dawn. It’s dawn.

That’s insane. So, new episodes start today.
It’s true.

Tell us some of the settings we’re gonna see.
Well, tonight’s is at the aquarium. It’s all about the aquarium and funny, fuzzy aquatic life.

I’ve gotta say my favorite episode so far is the one where you crashed a telenovela.
Yeah. That one was a lot of fun. And we didn’t have to move out on stages, which made it even cooler. We all had a lot more energy that episode.

Speaking of which, I heard Rachel Leigh Cook [who recently guest starred as a potential love interest for Shawn] is returning. Is this true?
This is true. She’s coming back to reprise her role. Same role. It would be weird if she were playing a different role, so we kept it the same.

Awesome. Is there going to be jealousy between her and Jules O’Hara?
Yeah, I think they’ve got a little goin’ for her. We’re just trying to mix things up a bit and change the energy and keep things as fresh as we possible can. It’s tough when you have one of those “will they or won’t they?” relationships [like that between Shawn and Jules] in your show because it’s like, “Wow. How can we keep this going year after year after year?”

Yeah, if you resolve it too soon you’ll have to bring a kid on.
Yeah, or something like that. So we’ll try this instead.

Sounds good! What about Gus? Is he going to get any action, like, at all?
It’s… I’m not gonna lie to you; it’s not going to happen this batch of episodes. But we’ve made a concerted effort to get him some action starting next season. We’ve been lucky enough to have been given a fourth season, so when we get started on that it’s one of the things on the board: “Give Gus some ass.” That’s on the board and you can look forward to that next summer.

Awesome. I’m sure Dulé Hill was happy about that.
He’s very happy. It’s a little overdue, but it’s coming.

So, by the way, I know that you’ve written episodes for the show in the past. Are you going to be writing any more?
Yeah. You know, I did two this season that, just for logistical purposes, are airing last and second to last. So they’ll be coming up in February and they’re both sort of darker, kind of different tonally from what we usually do, so they’re sort of lumped back to back, and then one of them is the finale, which is actually pretty tense, at least by Psych standards. So, yeah, all my contributions are backloaded this season. And I think that as long as they let me I’ll keep writing because I enjoy it and I really enjoy getting to write for my fellow castmates, letting them do things they don’t usually get to do and pushing the envelope for our show. I guess I’m sort of the renegade in the writers’ room, which I think is a healthy thing.

Yeah, I know that in the first season you wrote the episode "Scary Sherry", which I think ended that season and was also the darkest episode so far at the time.
That’s true. That’s definitely true, and it’s not that I think that should be our show on a regular basis. You know, you do sixteen a year; you gotta color outside the lines once or twice.

Mix it up a little.
Yeah, absolutely.

Do you bring any extra insight as Shawn Spencer when you’re writing an episode?
I think mainly what occurs to me when I sit down to write an episode is “What haven’t we done? What haven’t some of my supporting players done?” And I guess I tend to write sort of Shawn-light episodes, just because the rest of the writing staff that covers most of the time—

Focuses on Shawn.
Yeah. Yeah, so I think I tend to open it up a little bit and sort of privilege some of these other fantastic actors that I get to work with every week.

I want to ask you how much of the dialogue with the pop culture references is improvised, because you’re like a walking pop culture encyclopedia. It’s like a bouncing ping-pong ball going back and forth at top speed.
[laughs] You know, there’s always a couple thrown in there that are scripted, and we just sort of abuse it from there. More so me than anybody else, I think, because I am sort of a walking pop culture encyclopedia and this is the first time in my life that I’ve ever had a use for any of that crap.

[laughs] Well, it’s coming in handy now!
So I tend to fill it out way more than they need, and they sort of cut around the ones they want and the other ones go back into the trunk for ready usage!

According to the Psych-Outs that play at the ends of the episodes you guys also burst into song a lot on set.
You know, that was happening loosely during the first season. We’ve kind of worn ourselves out a little bit. It was something we did on the pilot to amuse ourselves, but they caught it on camera and everybody really gravitated toward it, and then they started asking us to do it every week, and it became a grind, because I think what made the first one so good was that it was spontaneous and came out of nowhere. It’s a little bit different when you have to actually manufacture ‘em. So I think we took a little bit of a hiatus from the singing so that when we bring it back it can have that old magic.

Oh, yeah. And then you moved on to, what, is the cast still playing mafia behind the scenes?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wow. You’ve got some inside info, man. That was our big thing last year. Absolutely. We were playing poker the past few years, and then mafia—I can’t remember which one of us learned it, and then it sort of just took everyone by storm. It’s a pretty phenomenal game. It’s a great sort of dinner party game.

It is a pretty great game. Not gonna lie.
But, yeah, everybody really took to that.

All right. Gus’ multitude of names. There’s a new one every week. Where do they come from?
Yeah. Well, I sort of… I sort of get myself into new situations and I do something and let it catch on and then it becomes this expectation, which is great, but then you want to get as far with that as possible. So it’s sort of a trial by fire thing every week. The writers will give something a shot, and if it’s good enough, it stays, and if not then maybe I can come up with something better.

Well, you know, if the name isn’t good enough, you could always distract people with another pineapple or something.
Another pineapple! You know, another one of the corners that I’ve painted myself into. Yes, yes.

[laughs] You’re thinking of replacing the pineapples with, like, guavas?
Yeah, well, we’ve spoken about it, but I guess there’s something to be said for tradition, and the pineapple’s always gonna have the sentimental value for us since it came from the pilot. The only thing about the pineapple—and it was actually used rather correctly, which is rare, because everyone things it was actually ironic—that little bit where I grabbed the pineapple off the top of Gus’ refrigerator was not scripted and the director of the pilot was not a fan of that moment. It was not in his cut, and I think it went in and out and in and out about two more times and was about one of the last things to get thrown back into the final cut of the pilot. And look what it became.

Well, now it’s the mascot!
It is! It’s iconic, man! It’s like, the face of our show!

It’s another character!
It is. It’s got the spiky hair and everything.

Psych airs on USA Friday nights at 10pm. Don't miss it!
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Singer/songwriter Rachael Yamagata

In order to continue in our grand tradition of making sure the music coverage here consists of illuminating interviews with artists you should have heard of, even if you might not have yet, I bring to you Rachael Yamagata, whose double album Elephants... Teeth Sinking Into Heart is taking the music world by storm, and rightly so; it truly is lyrical and masterful. In this interview, Rachael and I talk Philly, we mourn for the loss of record stores like Tower Records, and I admonish her when she confides that she has never seen The Lion King. Enjoy.

Hi, Rachael, it’s nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. How are you doing?

I’m good, how are you?
Good, thank you.

So right now are you doing a tour for your album?
No, I just got off touring. I got home about two days ago, so I am off until January, which is fine by me! [laughs]

Holiday break—just in time!
I know, right? [laughs] Yeah, it’ll be good.

Where are you based?
I’m in Philadelphia. I moved here about a year and a half ago from Woodstock, NY.

How’s living in Philadelphia?
It’s going great so far. Yeah, it’s got a great music scene, and I’m right around when the World Series happens, and the people here are really nice and laid-back, and it’s just enough of a city but not too big… you can fly direct! [laughs] You know, which is great. A lot of things.

Has the city influenced your musical development?
Um, no; just in terms of being great supporters of me, there’s a great [radio] station here, there are some amazing venues, and I love to travel and I’ve been in a lot of cities. Yeah, Philly’s been really supportive, which is nice.

Where did you grow up?
Maryland and DC, mainly.

So did you get involved in music while you were growing up?
It was mostly doing music theatre in school. That was the most that I’d done. I played piano on the side and wrote some songs but I didn’t really start pursuing it and joining a band until I was in college, and I guess that just finally formed around 2000.

Yeah, I know that for a while you were a part of a band called Bumpus, right?
Yes.

How did you decide you wanted to start a solo career and leave the group that you were in?
I didn’t, actually. I had no intention of leaving that group. I just was writing songs on the side for my own, you know, my own pastime, and the band I was in was very different. There were three lead singers, much more influenced by a full kind of hip-hop, alternative and funk vibe, and I was doing a couple covers in that band and one or two originals but mostly very, very different things from what I’ve done on tours, and I was in that band for about six or seven years, and a friend of mine introduced me to a scout at my label, and I just randomly sent in a couple songs and it led very quickly to a label showcase for my own material.

There’s been a lot of attention centered around this album—forgive me, I was twelve when your last album came out [laughter]—so was there this kind of reception when you received your first album?
There was a lot of press around the first album, yeah. It did get a lot of attention when it first came out.

I know between your last record and this one you ended up switching labels.
I did. I was on RCA before and now I’m on Warner Brothers.

So how did that happen? Basically, just the shifting of the business world. They cut half their roster and I was on that list. They were really sweet to me and gave me my record back and whatnot, so it wasn’t a difficult parting, but it did take up a lot of years to sort it out.

So now you’ve got your new album, Elephants… Teeth Sinking Into Heart. Great title, by the way.
Thank you!

So where did you get a lot of inspiration for this album?
Just two years of really intense traveling and touring. I certainly draw a lot from relationships, whether they’re my own or what I see around me. Definitely how we as people treat each other in relationships, that’s a big driving force.

So it was definitely more based on people and emotions than inspiration from books, films.
Yeah, it’s kind of based on observation and how I see the world and what’s happening around me. Things like that, yeah.

How do you think your style has matured since your first album?
I think this one’s a bit more abstract, more poetic musically. Sound-wise, there’s certainly a different type of instrument being used. The ballads are a lot more lush, there’s a lot of orchestration on it, and we did a bunch of guitar-driven songs, which I hadn’t really delved into that much before.

What are some of your musical influences, especially for this album?
It’s all over the place, really. There were those I discovered very late, like Led Zeppelin. Even the Beatles. Definitely David Bowie and Tom Waits, Elton John…

Speaking of Elton John—one of the greatest Disney showtune writers.
He is, definitely.

I watched The Lion King just earlier today.
How is it? I’ve never seen it, actually.

You’ve never seen The Lion King!?
I’ve never seen The Lion King.

You should see it. It’s great. And my respect for Disney also skyrocketed when I found out that Lion King 1 ½ is based off of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Oh, wow! [laughs] Crazy, now I’ll definitely watch it.

Yeah, well, the original is an update of Hamlet with talking animals, so. Good stuff.
[laughs]

I actually wanted to ask you—this has been happening for a while—what do you think about the way music has been shifting from less of a physical presence with CDs and stores to something almost exclusively online?
I think it’s just a real loss of ritual in listening to music that’s the most unfortunate thing. The exposure of having everything online is a tremendous positive for people who want to learn about new music, but I think the closing down of the record stores, vinyl relatively disappearing, things like that, is a big thing of like—instead of sitting down to read a book, you’re reading it off a Blackberry because you downloaded it, you know? There’s a ritual that I think is getting lost.

Right. Yeah, I completely agree. When Tower Records closed, and I think it was maybe a year and a half ago at this point, I was devastated.
Yeah. Sure!

And it’s beginning to happen to books too—the only reason books aren’t online as much as music is now is because they haven’t found a way to make electronic paper as cheap as regular paper.
Oh, really? [laughs]

They’re working on it! They’re working really hard, which is—I wish the wouldn’t, but you know.
Yeah, right? It’s crazy.

It takes some of the community out of it. No more going to a store to get a CD. “I want it so I’ll click a button on iTunes.”
Yep. I hear ya.

Speaking of which, are you a big reader?
I’m a reader as much as I can, but I’m pretty lucky with people giving me books. I just started Things the Grandchildren Should Know. It’s great.

Do you prefer modern literature or the classics?
I guess both. I love Wuthering Heights as much as the books my friends give me, so I’m all over the place. [laughs]

To find out more about Rachael and her music visit her website or her MySpace.
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English cabaret-punk act The Tiger Lillies

Don't let our beautiful new layout distract you from the topic at hand: the deliciously morbid music of the Tiger Lillies, a bizarre and truly unique musical trio from England. The Tiger Lillies have made a farce of just about every taboo topic in the universe. They make it their business to write the most morbid, offensive songs possible, and manage to do so with quite a bit of humor while they're at it. They're also kind of brilliant, as their past works, among which are the theatre show Shockheaded Peter and the album (and possibly future theatre show) The Twopenny Opera, would attest. In this interview, in which we talk about quite a few serious subjects in an utterly cavalier manner, I do not intend in any way to make light of real tragedy... I just mean to showcase people who are creating art from the humor that can be salvaged from it. Enjoy the interview.

So, this is the Seven Deadly Sins tour, right?
MARTIN JACQUES: Well, not really. Unlike most bands, we work the other way around. Most bands, they make a record and they go on the road and promote the record. We do it the other way around; we go on the road to practice for the next record.

[laughs]
MJ: So this isn’t the Seven Deadly Sins tour. It should be the Seven Deadly Sins tour, because we should be promoting Seven Deadly Sins, which was our last album. Instead we’re practicing our next show, which is Freak Show, and Sinderella. So we’re back to front. We’re a bit cockeyed.
ADRIAN HUGE: Because we’re touring all along. We don’t have the luxury of a record company paying us to go into a studio to work on new songs, and the best way to try out new songs is in front of a live audience. And then you discover which ones work well, they develop, and then you go and record them once they’ve developed. So, no, is the answer.

So the audience is the guinea pig.
AH: But I think they like it.

[considering this as an audience member] Yeah.
MJ: Well, sometimes. We did a gig in San Francisco, and some of them were actually a bit pissed off, because I’m learning the songs, you see. But we’re doing two shows for Christmas in January, so we’re kind of working in these new songs for the show. See, that’s the other thing, we tend to do music theatre shows, and we do so for the purpose of developing shows.

So tell me about the show you’re developing now, Freak Sh—wasn’t “Freak Show” a song on one of your past albums?
AH: Yes, that was the Tiger Lillies' Circus, which we started maybe ten years ago, and we wanted it to be more of a freak show, but it was quite an interesting circus-type show with performers and a whole set of circus songs, which was of course our album. And now we’re developing a new one called the Freak Show, which has three little people, two identical twins, and a contortionist in it.

Oh, wow.
AH: And a whole new set of songs all about freaks.

[laughs]
AH: So it’s a little bit closer to what we probably would have liked to have done in the first place, with the first show. It was a good show, and we’re hoping this one’s even better, aren’t we?
MJ: Yeah. You can talk so I can eat my food.
AH: Yes. Thank you. [laughter]

So basically this one’s kind of been percolating since Circus.
AH: Um, I think Martin wrote some new songs a couple of years ago and we’ve just been finding someone who would support the show with other people in it. We needed a producer. We have some producers in Athens, and we have a German sort of artistic director who did the first show, and so we’ll see what happens with that. Some good songs, interesting people in it, and, yeah, we’ll find out in January. As we said, we have to know the songs by the time we get there.

That would be ideal, right?
AH: No one could really afford to pay for months and months of rehearsal time, even for that goal. So we’ll know the songs and we’ll know what we can do and we’ll have a new show, hopefully.

So do the concepts for the shows come first or do you come up with those based on the songs you’ve been writing?
AH: It comes in all different directions. For example, I think two or three years ago there was the two-hundred-year birthday or death day of Hans Christian Anderson, and there was a lot of money and funding for celebrating that, and so we had I think a French producer—

Well, that sounds like a regular goldmine, that sort of thing. I don’t know about Hans Christian Anderson, but the original Grimm fairy tales are so much more gruesome than the ones we read today.
AH: Yes! Oh, yeah! Well, that one, for example, that came about when a producer in France suggested we compose something, and that became The Little Match Girl. That became a show, with us playing all the music, an actor and actress as the father and the little match girl. Ten years ago, Shockheaded Peter, that was when a producer saw us playing in bars. So fifteen years ago. And he liked what we were doing, and we worked on different things, got different people together over the years, and finally it came together once he had raised the money, and that all came together as that show, which took us all over the world, and it became quite a hit. And we did that in New York three times. The New Victory theatre—

The New Victory? They usually put on stuff that’s appropriate for kids! [laughs]
AH: Yeah, we were the ones who did the first “late show” there, apparently. That was quite interesting.

Huh! Well, I hope it wasn’t included in the yearly program next to all the kids’ shows.
MJ: Well, I always thought it was kind of… semi-alright for kids.
AH: It wasn’t too blasphemous, there was no swearing in it…

Yeah, I guess everybody dying is kind of mild in terms of your subject matter.
AH: Yeah.
MJ: Yeah, it was one of ours that was really a more acceptable mainstream sort of thing. Just death.

[laughs]
AH: That was another one of those funny old stories from a hundred and fifty years ago. And other times Martin will come up with a theme of songs and try and get people interested in putting it on.
MJ: Yeah. We’ve done a few things, even our Twopenny Opera, which was—

Yeah, I was about to ask you about that. I mean, it seems kind of fitting that you would choose to do a takeoff of The Threepenny Opera, because one of the most-used descriptors for your music is “Brechtian”.
AH: Exactly.
MJ: There’s a producer in New York who wants to put that on as a theatre show.
AH: It’s all a lot of patience and a lot of waiting, rather like planting seeds, and then you wait. Some will fall down, and some you’ll water.
MJ: What happened to the wine?
AH: [gesturing] It’s in there.

All right. Wine break. It’s okay, we’ll talk while you get the wine—you guys also collaborated with illustrator Edward Gorey, right before he died.
AH: Yes. That was amazing. I don’t think he went out that much any more, and he had a friend that used to take him CDs that he might be interested in and took him a Tiger Lillies CD, and he liked it, and then he sent Martin a box of unpublished work.

Oh, wow, he just sent the box?
AH: Well, I think they had some communication—
MJ: Yeah, he did, he sent me a box.
AH: Yes. He thought you were the cat’s pajamas.
MJ: That’s right, he thought I was the cat’s pajamas!
AH: So Martin went through and put some of them to music, and then unfortunately… you were going to fly over and meet him, weren’t you? About how many days before did he die?
MJ: Two or three days.
AH: Yeah. Because we were going to try and make that into a theatre show; as you may know, we worked with the Kronos Quartet, from San Francisco, on the album, and we were hoping to have a new theatre show to take over from the Shock Headed Peter show we were doing, which was just coming to an end then. But it, yeah, sort of stalled then.
MJ: It was a long process before it failed. Terry Gilliam was going to direct it, before it all went wrong. It all ended. It would have been good. It would have been nice.
AH: We did some shows with the Kronos Quartet.
MJ: Well, that’s true.
AH: But it wasn’t a proper theatre show. It was more like a requiem for Edward Gorey in the end.
MJ: Yeah. But, you know, we got a good album out of that, didn’t we? And that’s what we… well, the only thing I really care about is the albums I make. I love that album, The Gorey End. It was a great album. So, you know, that was all right. It was worthwhile.

The first time I ever saw you guys play was when you came to St. Ann’s Warehouse—what show were you guys doing then?
AH: Was it our Halloween show, or something? Was it our suicide show? Our Christmas suicide show?

Yes, there was quite a bit of suicide in there.
MJ: Suicide for Christmas? It was at Christmas.

Yes! Yes, yes, yes, now I remember the title, too. I just couldn’t remember which show.
MJ: Yes, Suicide for Christmas. There was a Christmas tree, and razor blades.

Yes, I remember because I went with my family, and none of us had any idea what we were in for, and my mother and my brother have kind of weak constitutions so they walked out fairly quickly but I was like, “You go! I’m stayin’!”
AH: [laughs]
MJ: Great. So your mother and your brother both hated it entirely, but you liked us.

I think all the morbid jokes and the—there was quite a bit of body humor, too, in that show. You know what, I think the suicide did it for my brother and the body humor killed it for my mom.
MJ: Well, it’s nice to know we’re alienating people.

[laughs]
MJ: We like to do that. Well, that’s good. I quite like that. I think I might mention that in the future to some of the other interviewers. “She came with her mother and her brother and they both left.”

[laughs] “But she stayed. And came back to conduct an interview two years later.”
AH: That’s right, yeah.

You wanna know more about the Tiger Lillies or either of their current shows, Freak Show and Sinderella? Visit their website or their MySpace.
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Blogger Gala Darling

Happy New Year! Now, how about kicking off 2009 with a little icing? I'm referring, of course, to the popular blog iCiNG, as well as to its fabulous owner, the inimitable Gala Darling, to whom I spoke one blustery Saturday afternoon the very night after Halloween. The lovely lady, who has probably had more different colors of hair than you have years old, had a lovely conversation with me about Halloween, about New York City and its marvels, about the seasons, about magazines and blogs and a wide variety of things.

[phone rings]
Gala speaking.

Hi, this is Keely!
Hi, how’s it going?

It’s going well; how are you?
It’s going very well, thank you.

So where are you going off to? You mentioned [via email] that you were leaving the country soon.
I am. I’m going back to New Zealand on the 18th of November and I’ll be there for Christmas and summer over there.

Oh, how lovely! Opposite hemisphere, opposite seasons.
It’ll be nice, yeah.

I’m more of a winter person.
Oh, I can’t stand winter. Like, I like the fashion and everything, but I can’t deal with cold temperatures. It just doesn’t make me very happy, so I’ve kind of resolved to chase the summer around as much as I can. I seem to be doing pretty well so far.

Yeah. Well, you certainly have the opportunity to do so; with iCiNG you can pretty much work anywhere in the world.
Exactly. And I did design my work and my lifestyle so that I would be able to be really as accessible as I needed to be. And it all worked out rather well!

Wait, so which part of New York City do you live in?
I live in the West Village.

Oh, you do?
Mm-hm!

What made you decide to live there as opposed to some other part of the city?
Um… it was kind of a coincidence. I saw an ad for an apartment on Craigslist and came to look at it and they offered it to me and I just basically moved in, and as I’ve been here I’ve just discovered that the neighborhood’s really amazing, so I totally lucked out with that.

Yeah. The West Village is a pretty cool place.
Whereabouts are you?

I’m in Brooklyn. Come here a lot?
Well, when I came back here in September I stayed with my friend in Brooklyn for about a month, and that was interesting. She lives in a really suburban area, which is totally not what I think of New York as being, so that was pretty unusual for me.

What part of Brooklyn was that?
Um, she lives around Avenue H.

Oh, yeah, that’s way out.
Yeah, totally. It was all big suburban houses and families, and it was pretty unusual.

Yeah, Brooklyn’s pretty—it doesn’t really get suburban until around there, and then if you keep going you hit Coney Island.
Yeah.

So you really seem to love the city, judging the way you talk about it on iCiNG.
Mhm. I love the energy of the city; there are just so many people here and these people are here for a reason. They’re not just here to subsist, I think. Pretty much everybody I’ve met here is here for a really good reason; they have a purpose, and that’s really inspiring to be around. And also, I think New York—I don’t think it’s the world’s most difficult city or anything, but I do think you need to work pretty hard to scratch your way into some kind of reasonable living situation and everything, so everyone’s pushing really hard in one direction or another and I find that really inspiring as well. New Zealand is really small and quiet, and when I was living in Melbourne, Australia, it was pretty much the same. It’s very low-key, people are just coasting along and chilling out and everything, and that’s cool but I’m not really like that. I can’t really relax. So being somewhere where everyone around me is as nerved out as me and they’re all as intense and preoccupied and product-oriented as me, it’s good for me, you know?

Mhm! Yeah. Well, for sure, there’s always something happening here, and there are so many opportunities, which is fantastic.
Mm. I was watching the Village Halloween parade last night because it basically goes past my window and I was sitting on my fire escape. And the creativity is fantastic. Just seeing how much effort everybody puts in, I found that really—it was just fantastic. It was really good to see.

Did you dress up last night?
Kind of, but not really. I dressed up as a rubber nun last Thursday and went to this Mariah Carey party, which was a total bust. It was so bad. But last night I decided to wear something slightly warmer, because I was freezing on Thursday, so I wore a Betsey Johnson dress and just like a hoodie and bunny ears and stuff, and I didn’t really do much. I walked around with friends and looked at people’s costumes and had a meal. It was good.

Well, you know, if you’re ever lacking for a costume on Halloween, you can always wear heels and tights and one of those scarves that are so popular now, the keffiyehs, and you can say that you’re a resident of Williamsburg.
[laughs] That’s true. That’s true. I found some really good costumes out where I went. It was so much fun. I’d never really had Halloween in America and I finally got to and it was so good.

Yeah, Halloween’s a lot of fun when you’ve got things lined up. I mean, there’s always something happening on pretty much any night, though, so you can always find something to do in the city.
That’s true.

What are some of your other favorite cities [besides NYC]?
My other favorite cities… hmm. I love Paris, but I haven’t spent a lot of time there. I just find it a really interesting, beautiful city. Where else do I like? I don’t even know, actually. I can’t even think of anywhere!

[laughter] Well, then it’s good that you live in New York!
Totally! I think I need to travel more. Maybe that’s the problem.

Well, there’s no shortage of great—and like I said earlier, you can take your work wherever you go, so that doesn’t hinder you.
Totally, yeah.

So how did you start iCiNG?
Basically, in 2006 I quit my job at UVM Post, which was extremely boring, and my boyfriend whom I had just gotten together with and I went to the States, we went to Burning Man, we went to New York, we hung out in San Francisco, we went to Norway and England and all those places, and then we moved to Australia from New Zealand. And I decided I just couldn’t deal with getting another normal job again. I felt like I had done my best, and I realized that I was really just repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, which never works, obviously. And so I sat down and I wrote a list of what I thought I could do to make money, and having a blog was one of them, and it was the first one I took so I was like, “Okay, let’s give it a go,” and I wrote my first article and I was hooked. So that’s basically the start!

Well, it was successful! I mean, it’s really grown into this whole community, almost, with your blog at the center of it.
Yeah, yeah.

Watching it grow, were you surprised by the way that it took off?
Um… it’s hard to say, because I feel like it was a long time ago. I mean, this year will be the two-year anniversary and I feel like it was such a long time ago. But I was surprised at how quickly it grew, especially because I didn’t do any promotion or anything like that. The way that it grew was by word of mouth, which was amazing. I think that the thing I was mostly surprised—I wasn’t that surprised by the number of traffic I was getting; I was more surprised by the people who were stopping me in the street and being like, “Oh my god! You’re Gala Darling!” That was the most insane thing. And to this day it still weirds me out when that happens. I mean, it’s fantastic, but it’s really unusual, so. Yeah.

Yeah, it’s interesting, because there are popular websites and popular blogs but iCiNG is something almost entirely different. It’s kind of more than that.
Yeah, it’s a really unusual blend of things. I mean, it started off as a fashion blog, and then I realized that if you’re miserable and you’re wearing a nice pair of shoes, that doesn’t really make a difference in your life whatsoever. I guess I would like to think that I’m not that shallow, that I’d not be like, “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter, just wear the good shoes.” So it kind of expanded to be how you can make your life happier and how you can really live a life that you’re delighted by. And also there’s a lot of—I wouldn’t say personality blogging; it’s kind of like—I’m making those little quotations with my fingers right now, but there’s definitely a lot of “here’s who I am and here’s how I live my life”, and when I broke up with my boyfriend I had to make a public announcement because I knew that if I didn’t people would keep asking me, and that’s kind of unusual as well. And the thing that I’ve noticed is that the more information I give out about my life, the more people want, which is kind of—I always try to keep in mind that the reason people come to my website is because they want something for them, like they want help with their problem or they want inspiration or whatever, it isn’t about me, so I have to keep it as non-egotistical as possible.

Right. Yeah, it’s a balance. A lot of it has to do with fashion, or with those style tips that you post like “buy flowers that match your hair”, but then some of it is also learning about you.
Yeah.

Speaking of which, you’ve got those style tips, and normally you would assume that those were about clothing, but they’re really about lifestyle or about doing little things or about inspiring happiness. When did you start doing those?
Oh, I’m not sure. A really long time ago. I think it probably was one of the earliest features that I started with. And it just sort of sprung up. Like, I often has these ideas and I would often just write them down and they ended up kind of looking like a list, so I thought, “Maybe I should just post two at a time and see how it goes,” and they’re one of the most popular things on the site, which blows my mind. It’s rather unusual to me, but, yeah, people love them. It’s really cool.

You also have a feature where you interview people of various interesting professions, like “I want to be a…poet” or “a…tattoo artist”. How did that develop?
I’m not really sure how it developed. No, somebody emailed me and said, “It would be really good if you covered more career stuff,” because I’d written things like how to run a blog and how to get a job at Lush cosmetics because I’d worked there for a year and a half, and somebody said, “Oh, it would be really good if you did some other career stuff,” and I said, “Shit. Well, I haven’t really done that much, so I don’t know what I could write about.” Then I was like, “Wait a second, I have a whole lot of friends who have amazing jobs that are totally this untapped resource.” So I just started contacting them and saying, “Would you mind answering some questions for this segment?” And I’ve talked to my friend who makes cupcakes for a living, to a graphic designer, a poet, all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, you’ve got health counselors and lingerie designers, so a completely wide variety of unexpected professions.
Yeah, I’m trying to make it as varied as possible because people reading my website—I have people who are 12 years old and women who are 65, and they’re all so different. So it’s useful if you can make it as broad as possible, because everyone’s gonna be into something else.

Right. Another really, really popular feature is Things I Love Thursday, which has gone beyond iCiNG; people make their own Things I Love Thursday list on their blogs and their websites and it’s become its own sort of phenomenon.
Yeah, it’s an amazing thing. It’s totally blown my mind. [laughs]

You’ve said before that the reason you started doing that was because you felt compelled to keep a list of things you were grateful for?
Yeah, I learned I guess a couple of years ago that being grateful is really a huge tool in terms of feeling happier about your life and everything. I mean, if you spend your time thinking about all the crap in your life you’re obviously not going to feel very good, but if you think of awesome things then it’s kind of a cumulative effect and you start to feel better and better and better. And I just think doing it every week is a great thing. I mean, I know people who do it every day; I can’t really muster up the time to do that, I guess it’s not that important to me, but I basically have a file on my computer called “TILT” and I update it over the week, and whenever I think of something I just put it in there and then I just post it on Thursday and invite everyone else to do the same.

In general, what’s your daily routine like, especially regarding working on iCiNG?
Well, I try to get up before 7:00 in the morning, because I do my best writing before midday, so if I wake up at like 9 or 10 I feel like I’m rushed for time. I’m not sure why that is; as soon as the sun gets high in the sky my brain stops working. It’s strange. But I wake up at 7:00, I check my email because I’m a nerd, and I drink juice, and I take my vitamins and then I start writing, and then I’ll probably write until maybe 11 or 12, and then I’ll post something, and then the rest of the day I kinda do what needs to be done. So that might be replying to email, I might go shopping… [laughs] I dunno. It really depends on what the day holds for me. My life is pretty unstructured. I guess the only thing that’s pretty concrete is that from 7 to midday I’m pretty occupied.

If after reading about iCiNG you find yourself jonesing for a sugary-sweet fix of your own, check out iCiNG itself. Here's hoping Gala will forgive all my atrocious puns.
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