Dial "P" For Podcasts

Before I started college, I worked as a delivery driver. It was a good gig because I got to drive around Winnipeg all day and listen to podcasts. On average, I listened to between 8 and 20 hours a week of podcasts of all different types.

Now that I'm at school, my intake has dropped significantly, but I listen whenever I can. When I mention my love of them, people often ask me what exactly I'm actually listening to.

Here are my Top 3 podcast preferences:

The Nerdist Podcast

Comedian and host extraordinaire, Chris Hardwick, began Nerdist after he got tired of playing the Hollywood game. Hardwick is a recovered alcoholic and The Nerdist Way was his way of telling his fellow nerds about tapping into their nerdiness to benefit their own lives. He's created a media empire including a number of excellent podcasts like...

Chris Hardwick, along with his pals Matt Mira and Jonah Ray, have hour-long chats with people of note from all parts of culture. Notable examples include Tom Hanks, Mike Birbiglia, and Hardwick's dad, professional bowler, Billy Hardwick.

WTF with Marc Maron

Marc Maron is an angry, angry man but a fantastic interviewer. Maron takes a more investigative slant than the Nerdist, but he also gets spectacular, honest, and raw interviews. If you don't like harsh language avoid this one.

Notable episodes include Todd Glass, Mel Brooks, and Gallagher.

Laser Time Network

 Chris Antista started his own podcast network and most of the podcasts under his brand are great. The flagship show is probably my favourite.

Laser Time is a low energy, hilarious, weekly-themed show that exists primarily to make fun of pop culture. It's Antista and a rotating cast of his friends making jokes and loosely following a theme like shame songs, functional immortality, or fear.

Read More

Who (or what) is Dan Harmon?

Pew Pew! Take that, mediocrity! 

There's a good chance that unless you don't know who Dan Harmon is. It's far more likely that you've heard of, watched, pirated the show he created and writes for, Community.

 I'm going to try something different than my Louis C.K. here. If you want to know about all the great, amazing things Harmon has done, check out his Wikipedia page.

I'm going to try to take a run at explaining who Dan is. 

Granted, I don't know him personally, but I do listen to his weekly podcast, Harmontown, and recently watched the spectacular documentary of the same name.


When I explain Harmon to someone who isn't familiar with him I generally use a formula.
I say, "He is part Woody Allen, part Bill Hicks, and part Stanley Kubrick."

OK, allow me to explain in detail:

-Woody Allen is a anomaly in the film industry. Allen has written, starred in, or directed (often filling 2 or 3 of those roles) 61 films in his career. He is universally adored by critics but has entirely shunned the Hollywood industry, having gained essential autonomy.
His actors receive the script for any particular day's shooting the morning of, and in doing so, Allen is able to coax incredibly genuine (and often award-winning) comedic performances from his talent.

If Mr. Rodgers and Michael Cera had some horrible DNA accident

-Bill Hicks was a groundbreaking comedian known for his in-the-audience's-face style of comedy as seen in this famous clip (NSFW). He was anti-anything and could eloquently and hilariously destroy just about any argument you could think of. The penultimate devil's advocate.

Coloured captions are neato!

-Stanley Kubrick is one of the most well-regarded filmmakers in American history. You've undoubtedly heard of such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining. Kubrick was known for his absolute control over every frame of his work, wanting every single element in every single shot to be intentional. The definition of an auteur.

This is definitely not my floor...

What this ungodly mixture creates is a writer who is entirely self-aware (and self-hating), incredibly vocal about his opinions on artistic credibility, and in possession of entirely original ideas and creative vision about which he is astonishingly protective.


In the special feature of the Harmontown movie, there is an hour-long scene at a surprise party for Harmon. His fiancee, Erin McGathy, published a book, in secret, containing dozens of Harmon's blog posts from the last decade. His friends took turns reading passages from the book giving intimate insight into the brain-shaped pile of vodka, Dungeons and Dragons trivia, and razor wire sitting under Harmon's skull cap.



Listen to the link below to an excerpt from the book, You'll Be Perfect When You're Dead, as read by Duncan Trussell.

Harmon created the show Community which he was fired from after season 3, rehired to after season 4, and riding like a hellish mechanical bull to Yahoo video for season 6. 
It is through the characters of this show that we really get to know Dan Harmon.

The main cast of the first three seasons (as seen in the below picture) are a window into Harmon's personality.

From left to right:

Abed is his outsider perspective. Abed is hyper-aware of his surroundings, deconstructing everything in his life and examining it. Abed is Harmon's childhood, the outsider looking in on "regular" people.

Chang is his absurdity. Chang starts off as a weird teacher and evolves into a character that couldn't exist in a real human. Harmon has said that he hates being told what to do. Ever. If you tell him his shoelaces are untied, he'll walk with them untied on the principle of defying you. Chang is that chaos.

Shirley is his morality. Harmon is not a religious person, but doesn't claim to be atheistic either. He wants everyone to be good to each other, even if "good" needs to remain somewhat loosely defined to do so. Shirley represents the well-meaning nature of people who desire to do "good".

Troy is his wish fulfillment. Troy starts off as the every-jock. He was a high school big-shot and doesn't need to be smart if he's cool. Over time, his friendship with Abed becomes on of the central pillars of the show. Harmon wants to believe that the kinds of people who made his childhood life miserable are worth redeeming.

Britta is the worst. Britta is Harmon expressing what he doesn't like about people. Britta is a well-meaning person who wishes she actually doing something with her life. Harmon often uses her to make fun of things he catches himself doing. Like this clip about bagels (Harmon says it the way Britta does and got so much flak for it from the writers, they wrote it in to an episode.)

Jeff is who he wants to be. Sort of. Jeff is smooth, slick, and always knows what to say. I don't think Harmon wants to be Jeff so much as he sees him as the full expression of his own sociopathic tendencies.

Pierce is how he feels. Harmon isn't a young guy. Pierce is Harmon's way of making fun of a world he doesn't understand anymore. He's in his 40s, from an era of tape decks and political incorrectness and Pierce is his conduit into that train of thought.

Annie is his obsessive compulsiveness. Harmon has talked on his podcast about his belief that he has some form of attention deficit disorder. He's also been open about the fact that during the writing of [specifically] season three of Community he was taking drugs like Adderall in potentially unsafe amounts to keep focused enough to write the way he felt he needed to.




The movie, Harmontown,  follows the podcast crew as they embark on a multi-city tour shortly after Harmon was fired by NBC. It is a wonderfully evocative look at the cult of Harmon; the kinds of people who are drawn to him and why. If you're at all interested in Dan Harmon, you must watch it.

Read More

Scrubs: A Show From 13 Years Ago You Should Watch

Scrubs is an NBC comedy-drama that aired from 2001 to 2010, and if you've never seen it before I need to tell you to get it going in your Netflix queue.


I had never seen an episode until earlier this month-

You have every right to look at me like that

But I had heard good things and decided to jump into it. Here's the synopsis of Season 1:

        John Dorian (J.D.)                            and                                 Chris Turk (Turk)

are medical interns at Sacred Heart Teaching Hospital. They navigate love, life, and listeriosis as young 20-somethings out of med school entering the realities of life and death. Quite possibly the best bromance on TV, these two set the bar high for laughs per minute and are a pair of friends who are so clearly more than actors pretending to like each other.

They are joined by a cast of well-written, varied characters including:

Doctor Cox, the hardworking, smack-talking 'Obi-Wan' to J.D.'s 'Skywalker'

Carla Espinosa, the experienced, friendly nurse and 'Leia' to Turk's 'Luke'

Elliot Reid, a fellow intern and the, uh... 'C3P0' to J.D.'s 'R2D2' (complete with sexual tension)



Chief of Medicine Bob Kelso; stuck somewhere between 'Jar Jar Binks' and 'Darth Vader'

Star Wars analogies aside, Scrubs is a fantastic example of how comedy can be used to amplify drama. 

There are many episodes that use a whimsical A-plot only to sidewind you with a "harsh reality" B-plot. 

Having these characters grounded in their talent as doctors and surgeons allows them to explore an absurd angle on some really heavy issues. Much like current TV hits "The Mindy Project" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine", having characters who are professionals and not Al Bundy archetypes means when they screw up, we really feel it.

Death is a recurring theme in Scrubs and it's dealt with matter-of-factly. Doctors deal with it every day, and if they stop to mourn, they'll miss saving someone else. 

That being said, Scrubs is a comedy first, and it is through such a command of the "it comes from a real place" style of comedy that the ups and downs really feel up and down.



I'm a lover of dark comedy, and this is what I would call a comedy with dark edges. It lacks the melodrama of Grey's Anatomy and the situational tropes of the Big Bang Theory, finding a niche of relatable humour with a stripe of reality in the creamy centre.

Watch it and laugh.

Read More

Late Night Comedy Round-up

Stand-up comedy has had a big resurgence in the public eye in the last 5ish years. After a void in the '90s, most of the late-night shows are once again letting comedians come on television and get their name out to a national audience. 

I have compiled for you, my friends, four comedians who are not as well known as your Louis C.K.s or your Jim Gaffigans, but are worthy of your laughter.


Some comedians are

But these folks are

Kurt Braunohler on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon

Kurt is best-known for his Nerdist network podcast called "The K Ohle". 
                                          (That's how it's spelled. It's pronounced like K-Hole)

Nikki Glaser on Late Night with Seth Meyers (contains some NSFW themes)

Nikki is a quick-witted comic known for her style of underselling punchlines. The studio audience in this clip is not quite there with her, but she's a real pro and powers through.

Pete Holmes on Conan

Pete holds a special place in my heart. He has this goofy persona and likes to deconstruct things to find the most innocent side of a joke. He hosts a great podcast called "You Made It Weird" on the Nerdist network.

Leslie Jones on Late Night with Seth Meyers

Leslie is a force of nature. She's been doing comedy for a while, but most people know her from her amazing appearance on Weekend Update. (Can a bitch get a beef bowl?!)

Read More

Louis C.K.

Every generation, in any medium, someone comes along and changes the way things work.

There’s really nothing I can say about Louis C.K. that hasn’t been said by a slew of comedy bloggers and writers with far more authority on the subject than me.

All I’m going to do is explain exactly why he is deserving of all the praise he receives.

Louis was born in Mexico, not that you’d guess that with his shocking ginger hair and beard.

 “C.K.” was a moniker he adopted early into his career, as his last name was impossible for the average comedy club MC to correctly pronounce (“C.K” is the phonetic pronunciation of his last name).

Louis has a heroic career in writing for late night comedy. Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Dana Carvey Show, and The Chris Rock Show all boast Louis’ singular comedic voice at different times.

He has been nominated for 25 Primetime Emmys. He’s recorded 4 critically acclaimed stand-up specials (and one yet-unreleased one).

He writes, directs, produces, and edits his award-winning sitcom Louie himself.

Mechanic of Comedy: Most stand-ups take 2 or 3 years to cycle through enough new material to make a fresh new hour. Louis takes inspiration from George Carlin, arguably the greatest comic of his time, by recording his special, and then immediately dumping his entire act and starting from scratch.

I can not stress how insanely difficult it is for a comedian, even a professional, to write a full hour of rock-solid material in a year.

Seriously.

In 2007 he recorded his first special, Shameless

In 2008 he released his second, Chewed Up

In 2009, his first independently produced special, Hilarious, setting the format of paying for the production himself, and keeping all the profit. Something comics like Jim Gaffigan and Aziz Ansari would follow suit with in following years.

In 2010 he used the hour he had written as content for the first season of Louie.

In 2011, Live at the Beacon Theater was released for $5.00 DRM-free on his website, further showcasing C.K.’s connection to his fans and the changing media landscape.

2012 was again focused on creating content for Louie, but he released the audio versions of Shameless and Live at the Beacon Theater DRM-free for $5.00.

In 2013 he recorded his fifth special, Oh My God, released in the same format he’d used for the last two years.

Louis C.K. is not for children, his content is often crude, black, and challenging. There are only a handful of comics living today who have the ability to manipulate every angle of a topic into a joke like Louis.

If you like stand-up, you can’t avoid Louis C.K. any more than a hockey lover could avoid Wayne Gretzky or a movie lover could avoid Stanley Kubrick.

Read More