Tag: Toronto

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News Podcast

Ep. #292: Nick Flanagan

Nick Flanagan is a very funny comedian, writer, and actor who hails from Toronto, Ontario but currently calls California home. Known for his endearingly dark stand-up and for fronting bands like Brutal Knights and Wrong Hole, Flanagan’s first comedy album, I’m Here All Weak, was released six years ago. This month Comedy Dynamics puts out his new record, Wiped Privilege and Flanagan plans to play some shows to spread the word. Flanagan and I recently caught up for a chat about living in Eagle Rock, California, leaving Canada for America for work, comedy and acting and performing in Brutal Knights and Wrong Hole, starring in films like Diamond Tongues, press releases and whimsy, mailing list activity stalking, DIY or die, Comedy Central and Comedy Dynamics, writing for kids’ shows like Odd Squad, the Kids in the Hall, Mark De Angelis, Tim McKeon, Adam Peltzman, Sinking Ship Productions, Ben Joseph and children’s writing, John Callahan’s Quads! and scriptwriting, writing off 2016, keeping busy, genuine math, children’s entertainment and its 24/7 work days, being a silly person and working on kids’ shows, discerning kids, fickleness, parent-engaging humour, crossing generations, six years since I’m Here All Weak, finding his voice, one-liners, impersonal joke machines like Demetri Martin and Anthony Jeselnik and Jerry Seinfeld, comedy as confessional, Aparna Nancherla and a grape and an apple walk into a podcast, Wiped Privilege and this year’s political environment, a Canadian living in the USA and reflecting societal problems in comedy, pseudo-activism, snark, tropes about comedians, contrarianism and info glut and Info Wars, an upswing, feeling the Flanagan, “Thank You for Supporting Live Comedy,” Mailchimp status update, and then it was time for some more California dreamin’.

Related links: theflans.com vishkhanna.com

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News Podcast

Ep. #291: Long Night Reviews 2016 with Aliya Pabani, Freddie Rivas, Jill Krajewski, John Semley, & Laura Hermiston

This episode of Long Night with Vish Khanna was recorded at the Polish Combatants Hall in Toronto, Ontario, as part of the Long Winter festival on Friday December 2, 2016. It was a thoughtful, funny, and fascinating year in review discussion about 2016, featuring some very wise panelists. Aliya Pabani is the host of The Imposter, Canadaland’s arts & culture podcast, and also an artist in her own right. Freddie Rivas is a talented comedian and puppeteer and is well-respected for hosting Rap Battlez in Toronto. Jill Krajewski is a social media producer at Vice and a contributor to Noisey where she’s written notable pieces, including “The Noisey Guide to Making Your Damn Venue Inclusive.” John Semley is a books columnist at the Globe & Mail and the author of This Is A Book About The Kids In The Hall. And Laura Hermiston is the driving force behind the Toronto band Twist whose new album, Spectral, is out now on Buzz Records. Recorded by Dave MacKinnon. Photos by Rick Clifford. Produced by Long Winter and Vish Khanna.

Related links: torontolongwinter.com vishkhanna.com

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Categories
News Podcast

Ep. #290: John Semley on The Kids in the Hall

John Semley is a prolific journalist and cultural critic based in Toronto who regularly contributes to the Globe and Mail and Macleans magazine. His obsession with comedy led him to fall in love with true originals in the innovative Canadian troupe, the Kids in the Hall. ECW Press has just published This is a Book About The Kids in the Hall, Semley’s exhaustive and engaging overview of the life and times of Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson, otherwise known, as the Kids in the Hall. Semley and I recently met at his home to discuss Bloordale and a toxic gas event, Scharpling & Wurster at the Mod Club in Toronto, SCTV, phone comedy and radio shows, oblivious characters, The Kids in the Hall and The Simpsons and Mr. Show, adults comedies getting syndicated and then running at like four in the afternoon when kids get home from school, obsession and fandom, being a metal guy, comedy and classic rock, the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, metal and hardcore scenes and Alexisonfire in St. Catharines, Constellation Records and Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Neurosis, generalism in a post-taste era, sardonic, contemptuous comedy, surrealism, humour and coping with life, the Kids in the Hall were outcasts, seeing Brain Candy at a movie theatre when he was nine years old, dad issues among the Kids, Mr. Show and irony versus The Kids in the Hall and sincere rage, psychological studies and post-Freudian critical theory, skewering authority figures and conceptions of manhood, cross dressing and female characters, queerness, dad types, rebelling via The Kids in the Hall, idiocy, his 2013 oral history about the Kids for NOW Magazine and its surprising popularity, Toronto the cool, Queen Street West in the mid-1980s, comedy club intimacy and the Rivoli, love comedy discomfort, comedian smugness and aloofness, the interviewer who thinks they’re as funny as the comedian they’re talking to, his entertaining prose in this book, when trying to relate to someone leads to alienation, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet and Lorne Michaels’ pride for the Kids in the Hall, Janeane Garofalo, Dave Foley’s show Spun Out and the Kids’ unique chemistry, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert reviewing Brain Candy, negative reviews of Death Comes to Town, nothing like the Kids in the Hall, “Screw You, Taxpayer!,” an unauthorized biography, a second book proposal, interviewing ‘Dylanologist’ AJ Weberman, @johnsemley3000, and then John when to hang out with these guys who smoke!

Related links: ecwpress.com john-semley.squarespace.com vishkhanna.com

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