This interview was conducted in the summer of 1999 by Jess Latham.

BV: Fave music? I just got the new Stereolab CD, I highly recommend it!

FG: Yeah! I just got the new stereolab, too. I like the first half tho,' the free-jazzy, tropicalia kind of stuff, more than the rest of the        record...what else? I've been listening to a lot of 'Os Mutantes', and early 'T-rex', like all the elf songs, um, all the 'Deviants' reissues, Brian Eno-the 'before and after science' record, a lot of bootlegged CDs of crazy Japanese stuff, all that are like 220 b.p.m, created with sounds from video games, and samples from like Disney movies - that stuff makes me so happy when I'm working, and drives my roommates insane!

BV: Fave movies?

FG: I like so many different movies it's crazy - not very many lately though... I love the late 60's A.I.P pictures - 'Wild in the Streets,' 'Psych Out,' I still haven't seen 'Riot on Sunset Strip' in it's entirety (anybody with a copy-email me!), but that's definitely one of them! 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls', for sure...almost every Godard movie ever - especially 'Masculin Feminin', 'Weekend', and 'Alphaville'. all the late 70's j.d. movies 'Over the Edge', 'Little Darlings', I just rented 'Foxes' with Jodie Foster and the girl from the runaways in it, but I haven't watched it yet. I'm trying to see more stuff from the Czech new wave too - 'Daisies' is one of the best things I've ever seen.

BV: Fave Books?

FG: I haven't read a lot of fiction books lately. There are so many on the market and they're all sooo bad. I like when kids write novels and send them to me, and a lot of writing that people put up on websites is great. Momus has a new essay on his site like every day. I always read anything new by Francesca Lia Block and William T. Vollman. I read magazines like a fiend. I buy like 20 different ones every month, and I still have to go sit at the newsstand all day and read all the ones that I didn't buy, it might be like an obsessive disorder or something, I guess...what else? I just got a library card in my new town (yay!), so right now I'm reading the Charles and Ray Eames book. They're artists and furniture designers and totally inspiring (plus there are all these photos of Eames chairs that make me drool, and a book called 'No Place Like Utopia', plus a bunch of picture books of Las Vegas and Tokyo and one of American roadside restaurants that are totally beautiful. I love architecture and urban planning books more than anything (the armchair architectural theorists and angry men of urban planning write the best books!), almost any book that MIT Press puts out has proven to be good, esp. the 'zone' collection, which I faithfully haul around with me every time I move, even though they're the heaviest things I own...

BV:Fave TV shows?

FG: I'd probably have more favorite TV shows if I had cable, or got more than one channel, or had grown up in a house with television...that said though, I have to admit that I'm one of the last holdout 90210 watchers that I know, and have
been caught on numerous occasions defending Tori spellings acting. My friends think I'm just saying that cause once she wore a shirt that I designed on the show (while she broke up with her boyfriend and caught her Mom having an affair
or something), but I seriously think that she's the Lucille ball of the 90's...

BV: Who are some of your favorite artists and illustrators?

FG: A lot of my favorite artists are people I don't remember the names of, so I'll describe them in a really abstract and roundabout way until someone either gives up or figures out who I'm talking about, like i love the girl who does some stuff for Wallpaper magazine, and also did Target's back to school catalog, and last years Screaming Mimi's ads, Lisolette something, i think - her stuff is amazing. I like the other Illustrator who does a lot of stuff for Wallpaper, too - Jordi Labanda. Michael Economy rocks. I think that guy Kaws who paint little cartoon skulls over bus bench supermodel pictures and then carefully bolts them back in place is pretty amazing. So many of my friends are artist and illustrators that are so great, too...

BV:When did you first become interested in drawing?

FG: I'd say I've been drawing pictures pretty much my whole life, my Mom said I used to sit at the table for hours at a time with stacks of paper and just crank out pictures. She sent me this huge folder full of ones she kept, and some are from when I was like 2, and you can totally see that it's a chicken, or whatever it's supposed to be. I drew all these series drawings, like the bunny collection, and the fairies, and the praying mantises, I guess hundreds of them sometime when I was really little...

BV: What comic books would you recommend to someone who is new to them?

FG: There are so many good anthology comics out right now, that I would advise someone to pick up something like that first. 'Non' , 'Girlfrenzy', and 'Top Shelf' are great ones! Highwater Press is doing a lot of amazing stuff, longer self contained books, stuff that's better to pick up than a novel a lot of the time...my friend Craig Thompson just put a book out on Top Shelf - 'Goodbye, Chunky Rice' that's amazing. there's a ton of other stuff that I'm just not thinking of right now...

BV: You finished Bomb Pop while living in Kentucky, and Seth tells me you will be moving to Kansas soon. How do you feel about moving around so much and does it affect your work? I am living in Alabama so I hear a lot of people say well you should be in New York or LA, do you get a lot of that? I know your living in California, but when you were in Kentucky was there prejudice against you, or was it hard for people to take you seriously as an artist?

FG: I love moving to small towns! I think it affects my work in a positive way, because the ratio of how much 'real' work I've got to do to pay the rent suddenly goes way, way down, and I have all this time to be productive and do art... I came back from Kentucky with enough paintings for two big art shows, and I wrote a teen novel that's still packed in a box somewhere. I guess the downfall is that the stuff like the art shows is all back in the main cities - L.A.,San Francisco and New York or whatever, so I could have a million paintings hanging in my house in Kentucky that no one will ever see, or I can go back to the city, which sucks. This time around, I'm going to try to stay in the country and just keep in really good touch with everybody. I think the website will help, I'm gonna eventually turn it into an online art gallery there, where people can see and buy the paintings. I'll send out flyers or whatever, just like a regular art show. I've never really noticed a prejudice against my being from a small town from art directors or whoever, but i move around so much, anyway, that I'm never really associated with a single town, so even though it's like Louisville, Portland, Austin, Lawrence, Kansas or wherever, maybe it seems almost jetsetty or something! when i was leaving San Francisco this girl gave me a lecture about how the sacrifice of living on filthy streets and getting robbed and working 3 jobs and paying like $2000 rent or whatever is one we have to make to be taken seriously as 'artists' cause we live in San Francisco. Whatever.

BV: You recently did some illustrations for the August issue of Teen magazine, have you done anything else for any major publications? Have you had any new offers since then?

FG: I totally wanna sell out to teen magazines for a while. I don't even care. I'm gonna have a sticker in with (I think) the December issue of 'Jump UK', and hopefully a monthly comic for a few months, but that'll be through cosmic, and will be sort of an ad for them, too...as soon as I'm less busy, I'm gonna barrage every teen magazine on the market with portfolios, hopefully get a lot of jobs, and then take like a year off to sit around on my porch and drink lemonade.