Tim O’Shea: Do you think your affinity for pop culture began where you grew up–in Westchester County, New York–an area where you note: “certain notable people became attracted to the area. Jackie Gleason, for one. Other actors. Writers. Thinkers. Even Peter Frampton (on the heels of the blockbuster album “Frampton Comes Alive”)”

Chris Epting: It definitely started at that point in my life, but I think it was more a process of the times than the geography. That said, our close proximity to New York City was valuable in terms of what were exposed to, but in general I think growing up in the thick of the 1970s is what really did it for me. It was an interesting time in that you had some great directors breaking out (Scorcese, Coppola, etc.) some cutting edge TV (All in the Family, MASH, etc), great radio (both am/fm), decent theater—a lot of culture was in flux, and the churn produced, I think, a wonderful storm of pop culture fury that still influences a lot of things today.

O’Shea: I love your lists of favorites–now in terms of movies, what would you add to your list from recent films (or older films you have since discovered since making that list)? As a pop culture expert–do you enjoy films like High Fidelity or films that somehow utilize one’s love of pop culture as a plot characteristic or element?

Epting: I liked High Fidelity a lot – and when done right, yeah, movies that zone in on a love of pop culture can be really compelling. Now let me check that list—not sure how much modern stuff I’d add–but movies I’ve kept going back to would include Dazed and Confused, Slacker, The Rutles, Schindler’s List, Quiz Show, Patton, Heaven Can Wait and a few others—on a TV note, the Larry Sanders Show is for me, one of the best examples of a production that examines pop culture beautifully by peeling back layer after ugly layer of reality—in one of the funniest formulas I’ve ever enjoyed. Same goes for the series, Freaks and Geeks, which I can watch any time of any day.

O’Shea: In terms of doing pop culture research or otherwise maintaining your base of knowledge–are there certain news sites or other resources you’ve grown to rely upon for good information?

Epting: Nothing too specifically. I still read lots of newspapers for source material, and I enjoy a lot of news sites, including the NY Times, LA Times, NY Post, Wall Street Journal, London Times and of course the Huntington Beach Independent, for which I write a weekly column. I also like Gawker.com/Defamer.com because they’re not afraid to attack celebrity culture and I think in age of too many publicists, handlers and entourages, we need more of that—celebrity culture has become so pervasive and influential and so it need some checks and balances—it needs to be challenged.

O’Shea: What was the first baseball game you ever saw–and I wonder, do you get more enjoyment for major league or minor leagues baseball?

Epting: My first game was the Mets versus the Cardinals at Shea Stadium in 1970—I was 8 years old and I remember it quite well. I enjoy going to watch the Anaheim Angels play (we have season tickets) and I’ve taken my son to games since he was about 3 (he’s 15 now) and so it’s always been part of our lives together (my wife and daughter go too, but not as much). For me the majors vs. minor experience is sort of like two different products, and I enjoy them both—sort of like Broadway vs. Off-Broadway—one’s big and bright and the other is funkier and more intimate—both good experiences depending on what you’re in the mood for.

O’Shea: What is your favorite baseball memoir or fictional novel?
Epting: My favorite baseball memoir hands down in A Day in the Bleachers by Arnold Hano (1954). He wrote it in the bleachers at the Polo Grounds the day Willie Mays made his famous catch in the 1954 World Series. I’ve gotten to know Mr. Hano the last few years and when he agreed to write a foreword for my new Polo Grounds book, I was thrilled—and the piece he wrote is beautiful-I’m still pinching myself. (Epting wrote a piece about Hano in 2006 for the L.A. Times)

O’Shea: In terms of your essays at your website, I’d love to see more essays about Cheever.

Epting: (Me too! )

O’Shea: Have you ever considered doing a book about him?

Epting: Not a full book, per se, but I have just started writing a book that’s a collection of narrative, non-fiction essays about life. I’ve been fortunate in terms of being at the right place and right time in many instances. Recently Eclectica asked me to contribute some short pieces as their featured author of the month. I did, and the process of writing a few of these stories was a powerful experience for me. The feedback I got within days of the publishing was so strong and refreshing that it gave me the idea to pitch the idea of a collection and so here we are. Within this book will be a series of Cheever stories, building off of the first meeting, along with many other strange run-ins and experiences that hopefully will be able to either relate to or simply have fun reading about.

O’Shea: If the situation presented itself (maybe it has already), if a teenage aspiring writer contacted you for advice about writing, would you take him or her under your guidance–as Cheever once did for you?

Epting: Absolutely. I hear from writers from time to time and make myself as available as I can be. I also speak at schools regularly and am always happy to review work if someone wants an opinion. I’ve had such great experiences learning from so many experts over the years that often I feel like I’m simply passing their advice along; a conduit as much as anything else. Knowledge is to be shared, and I’m always flattered to be asked for any sort of help (knowing full well that I’ll learn from them, too—that’s the beauty of the process, being reminded by youth just how precious the motivation is to want to create and why it must always be tended to).

O’Shea: In a few months, the second edition of your book, Roadside Baseball, will be released “updated and revised to include about 100 more baseball history sites” Can you mention what some of those sites may be?

Epting: Sure, some of the more interesting ones (to me) is the secret river site where they dredge up the mysterious mud that umps coat the balls with before each game to remove the sheen, the first baseball factory in the country (now condos, but in the original structure), a field where Babe Ruth shot a silent movie in 1921, and a bunch of newly place historical markers commemorating both players and long-gone stadiums.

O’Shea: What’s the biggest challenge to researching a book like Roadside Baseball?

Epting: Never giving up! As with my other pop culture/travel books, there’s an obsessive amount of curiosity that drives the content and so the goal is to always dig farther and deeper for those wonderfully obscure places that help define the topic—and then once you feel you’ve exhausted it, dig two or three times deeper. Challenges also include the slow death of newspapers, diminished library resources and other systemic research-material ebbing due to budget cuts, the economy, etc. As well, traveling to lots of small towns, it can be hard running down tips to locate/track down precise pieces of information. But it’s so much fun and you meet so many interesting people that it’s okay, it eases the frustration because the journey is so rewarding in and of itself.

O’Shea: How hard is it to find a unique thing to say about New York baseball, given the number of books written about the city and its relationship to the sport.

Epting: Well, in my case, with the Early Polo Grounds book, it’s a very specific niche that hasn’t been beaten to death as of yet—that leaves me room to mine my own fascination with it and hopefully present it in a fresh, interesting way based on my own passion for the place—which is intense.

O’Shea: Also, what attracted you to writing about the Polo Grounds?
Epting: I never went there, it was torn down when I was three, but since I was a kid, it’s always intrigued me—the name, the shape, the quirkiness, the mystique—it’s hard to explain but I’ve attached to the idea of that stadium for a long time. I’ve studied thousands of pictures of it, explored the former site—it’s weird, but I feel a magnet-like pull to the Polo Grounds and so a book like this is sort of like a Valentine; a physical way of paying tribute to this wonderful ghost of a ballpark that’s always enchanted me.

O’Shea: What’s been the response been like to your book, Vanishing Orange County?
Epting: So far so good—Orange County is big (about 33 cities and three million people) so you have many generations of families who enjoy the whimsy and emotion of sort of “time-traveling” across 128 pages. For me, history books should emotional and gripping, not just a dry reading of facts.

O’Shea: Would you ever consider doing another book along those lines for another area of a certain town or state?
Perhaps, but I’d have to be very familiar with the area (NY, Boston) because that series of books requires that the writer have a real intimacy with the city-subject. I just started another in that series called “Los Angeles’s Historic Ballparks.”

O’Shea: Would you say you use YouTube as both a marketing tool, as well as a means to test out potential book ideas with audiences?
Epting: Definitely. It’s a terrific, direct way to go straight to your audience with your concept. For me, YouTube is the single most impactful site on the internet and for me it has been (I think) an effective tool to help let the world know what I’m up to.

O’Shea: How often in doing a book like Led Zeppelin Crashed Here do you try to contact the musicians–to gain their perspective?
Epting: I’ve tried a few times, but learned that in many cases, musician’s memories are highly unreliable.

O’Shea: Do you think your understanding and appreciation of pop culture is part of what makes you successful in advertising–understanding what appeals to audiences through your scholarly knowledge of pop culture?
I think that understanding an audience’s attitude is a key to advertising—that and always keeping a message simple and truthful. Popular Culture does play a part in terms of defining or predicting the taste patterns of an audience, but more than anything for me, it’s common sense and instinct. When you write a commercial, you have to climb inside your audience’s head and track where they are in life-their moods, desires, passions—their attitude.

O’Shea: Led Zeppelin Crashed Here mentions your top 25 concerts of all time–have any recent concerts you’ve attended forced someone out of one of the top 25 slots?

Epting: Well, last month my son and I saw AC/DC from the front row at the Forum in Los Angeles—first two seats against he stage and I will say, that could bump a few of the shows on the list. I was never a big AC/DC fan, but my son is, and I am now a convert. It was a big, loud, honest rock and roll show that delivered as much as any show I’ve seen in years. Right before that, on a quieter note, we saw Lindsey Buckingham play, and he was amazing as well. He’s one of my favorite guitar players and his solo show is very artful and atmospheric.