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Before creating his world-beating radio program The Best Show, Tom Scharpling wrote punk zines, covered the NBA, produced the TV show Monk, and auditioned (unsuccessfully) for The New Monkees. Every indie musician’s favorite comic, Tom writes and performs with Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster and has directed videos for artists including Kurt Vile, Aimee Mann, and The New Pornographers.
In his brilliant memoir It Never Ends, Tom places his story of breaking into comedy — hilarious as you’d expect — within a larger story of growing up in serious emotional turmoil. His account of trying and failing to piece together memories of this turmoil is particularly gripping.
His goal, Tom explains, is to give you, the reader who finishes the book, “no choice but to rise from your seat and slow clap while looking at the cover, muttering under your breath, ‘That SOB did it. He really did it!’”
I had a great time talking with Tom about writing, music, the New York Knicks, and what’s wrong with Chicago-style pizza.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Ross Collin
You begin the book with three quick stories of embarrassing yourself in front of Patti Smith, Marshall Crenshaw, and Nick Cave. What do these stories say about what you think is funny?
Tom Scharpling
It’s funny when embarrassing things happen and you own them, rather than swallow them or deny them. When a ridiculous thing happens to me, that’s when I think, “This is a gift because I get a chance to be part of something really stupid right now.” Because there’s commonality in it. While it can only happen to you in that moment, everybody’s had some version of it.
Ross Collin
You were 13 when, in the middle of a Marshall Crenshaw show, you asked him for his autograph. He said no — understandably — and it hit you what a weird thing that was for you to do. But you didn’t say, “I’m never going to a concert again. I’m never talking to an artist I like again.”
Tom Scharpling
Oh, no. If anything, it’s just fuel for me to say, “I will get this right — at some point. That was not the right way to do it. I will figure out the right way to do it.”
Ross Collin
Growing up, there were stretches of your life when you were under serious emotional strain, but you have no memories of those times. As part of your work on the book, you tried to track down records of your experiences. At some point you realized you wouldn’t be able to fill in the blanks. How did you move forward as a writer, realizing you wouldn’t be able to write more detailed accounts of those times?
Tom Scharpling
I was not trying to write anything that was meta, or overly clever. It wasn’t like, “Here’s my book about writing a book.” That was not the goal with it at all. But it kind of became the story that I couldn’t remember these things and I’m not going to get any closure on some of this stuff.
But I don’t think there’s any such thing as closure in a pure sense. It’s like, you can get answers, you can get some version of what you would call closure, but it doesn’t wrap up. Nothing ends, it carries over. It carries over, one way or another and is a part of you. But it’s not as clean as entertainment would like you to see it, where you learn a lesson and then that sticks and it’s taken care of and it never comes back again.
Ross Collin
You write, “I’ll always gravitate to those who just keep producing, unafraid of tainting their reputation.” Did you have any moments of doubt about how releasing this book might affect how people see you and your work?
Tom Scharpling
Absolutely. In the book, I’m saying my life is not as light as I might’ve presented it and here are some heavier parts of me that I am now owning. It was weird to be so vulnerable in certain ways, because I’ve always been able to be in control of what I talk about, what I don’t talk about, on The Best Show. And to some degree, I’m always controlling my business, as everybody is. But now I look at [the fuller story in the book], I’m like, “Yeah, I’m comfortable with owning this version of things as my reality now.”
Ross Collin
Early in your career, you wrote about the NBA for magazines like Slam. What do you say about basketball to sports-averse fans of indie rock and comedy?
Tom Scharpling
Basketball is transcendent and the artistry is just on full display. And it’s an athlete’s sport, not a coaches’ sport. You can draw up whatever play you’re going to draw up, but anything can change and then the players are making the art in front of you. And people respond to that.
Those teams, in New York, especially, become the hub of culture. When you look at how NBA players impact fashion and music trends and just the cross-pollination between players and musicians and writers and directors, it’s very powerful and it’s very inspiring.
This spring [when the Knicks made the playoffs], it was like everything just woke up and people were energized and inspired and just moved. I was getting so moved by those games, because it was resonating back to the ‘90s Knicks and I could feel what it felt like again. Because everyone is sharing it and it’s just powerful.
Ross Collin
In the book, you describe another powerful moment on the court: You covered an event where Papa Roach and some contest winners played a game of basketball, gorged themselves on free shrimp, and then got a skills lesson from Knicks legend Clyde Frazier.
Tom Scharpling
Oh my God. If only I could show you what I saw…! What I didn’t capture was the feeling of, “This sucks…and this is also the greatest moment of my life.” I think Clyde was saying to himself, “I’m getting $10,000 to hang out with these dudes. And then I’m going to leave Madison Square Garden and live my awesome life with $10,000 more than I had when I woke up.”
Ross Collin
As you worked on the book, were there other books you took as models or as inspiration?
Tom Scharpling
There are so many comedy memoirs. It became pretty apparent early on that I wasn’t going to just be able to string together a bunch of funny stories into a book. And I’m not putting that down, because those are some of my favorite books, but I knew mine was going to have to be a little different than that, more of a single piece with a through-line that would define the whole thing.
One of the books that impacted me was Adam Resnick’s Will Not Attend. It’s so funny. Even when he’s telling sad stories, he makes it funny. And it was very important to me that my book would stay funny, even when the subject matter wasn’t necessarily funny.
I read John Waters’ book Role Models over and over. It’s so well-written and it’s so fun to read, and if you know his voice, you can just hear him writing it. But it doesn’t feel like somebody just transcribed a lecture from him, of him telling stories. That helped me think about writing in my own voice.
Ross Collin
What music did you listen to as you wrote?
Tom Scharpling
I would listen to a lot of Destroyer, William Tyler, Mary Lattimore, Kurt Vile. They kind of created a headspace and a mood that I could write in. That music wasn’t overpowering — it was complementary to what I was writing. Sometimes, I couldn’t listen to anything other than instrumental stuff, or very sparse lyrical stuff. Destroyer has more lyrics than those other artists, but Destroyer fits all jobs.
Ross Collin
Let’s end with a move from The Best Show. When a caller mentions a city like, say, Nashville, you say, “Nashville, home of…” and the caller names the great bands and artists of the city. So, for Chicago Review of Books, fill in the blank: Chicago, home of…
Tom Scharpling
Hmmm…Chicago is home of…Weird pizza. It’s the home of weird cake with some red sauce on it.
Ross Collin
(laughs) I used to love Chicago deep-dish pizza when I was ten years old. Now, you’d have to pay me $300 to eat two pieces of deep dish.
Tom Scharpling
Yeah, well, you’d need that money for your medical bill because if you ate that now, as an adult, it would put you in the hospital. It’s not edible. It’s not for human consumption.
NON-FICTION
It Never Ends
by Tom Scharpling
Abrams Press
Published June 6, 2021
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