Podcasts: comedians and guests

LA Podfest 2015 remote access
Jackie Kashian: If you are coming to the fest, all good. If you can't make the fest you can LIVESTREAM the whole damn thing for $25... use the CODE "dork" and then it's $20. You can see ALL the PODS for that $20 (for a month). www.lapodfest.com

Comedy Bang Bang with Gillian Jacobs, Paul F. Tompkins, Mike Hanford hosted by Scott Aukerman


The JV Club: Janet Varney hosts Kether Donohue and HoneyHoney

The JV Club at home: #100 with Busy Phillips

Go Bayside!: April Richardson hosts Jimmy Pardo to discuss her teenage obsession: Saved by the Bell


Never Not Funny: Jimmy Pardo et al. host Patton Oswalt, who slanders James Randi and whines about placebo debunking for no good reason...


The Dork Forest: Jackie Kashian hosts Jimmy Pardo


The Dana Gould Hour


Girl on Guy: Aisha Tyler hosts Marc Maron

Aisha Tyler and Al Madrigal as guests of The Crabfeast

WTF: Marc Maron hosts Whitney Cummings, Shelby Ferro, Pamela Adlon, Desi Jedeikin, Amber Preston

Paget Brewster interviews Marc Evan Jackson; Brewster, Paul F. Tompkins, Eugene Mirman, Nellie McKay and Loudon Wainwright III on WITS from San Francisco SketchFest; BEYOND BELIEF on THE THRILLING ADVENTURE HOUR

Substitute host Paget Brewster interviews fellow Thrilling Adventure Hour cast member Marc Evan Jackson on Kevin Pollak's Chat Show:


About The Thrilling Adventure Hour:


A sample of Beyond Belief (my favorite component of The Thrilling Adventure Hour):

“THE YESTERDAY SHOP ON TODAY STREET”

Starring Paul F Tompkins and Paget Brewster as those married mediums Frank and Sadie Doyle. Also Craig Cackowski as Proprietor Joe; and Elizabeth Reaser and Tom Lennon as curiosity shop customers. Narration by Hal Lublin.

link to listen to this episode of WITS: 

Paul F. Tompkins, Eugene Mirman and Paget Brewster with Nellie McKay and Loudon Wainwright III at San Francisco SketchFest, 2014

some Overlooked a/v: NOTHING PERSONAL (2009 feature), ONE MORE TRAIN TO ROB, several podcasts, etc.

Nothing Personal, the first feature by Polish-born Dutch writer/director Urszula Antoniak, seems to encourage people to project upon it, filling in details that are not actually provided nor really necessary to enjoy this beautifully-shot, if dramatically somewhat slight, film. It begins with Anne (Lotte Verbeek) watching from (presumably) her emptied (Amsterdam?) apartment as various folk go through her household possessions out on the street below; divorced, widowed or merely leaving (various sources assume one or another of these, though the film doesn't confirm any), she pulls a wedding ring from her finger as she leaves the empty apartment. We next see her hiking/hitchhiking down what turn out to be coastal highways in Ireland, stopping at a picnic spot to retrieve a sandwich from the garbage, to the discomfort of an Irish family at a nearby table. She somewhat brusquely greets them and asks them for a lift, in English that sounds slightly Irish- as well as Dutch-accented (later, she will speak a few phrases in Gaelic); the mother of the family refuses, given their children. Anne takes this in stride, and gets a lift from a truck-driver who eventually begins to unzip his fly, causing her to throw her backpack out of the truck and take a dive after it; when he stops, shouting at her, she simply wordlessly shouts back at him till he leaves, flustered. And, not long after, she spots a little house nestled on a peninsula, from which a small motorboat is leaving...and she wanders down, breaks in, and makes herself briefly at home, rearranging the hanging coffee mugs in the kitchen so that they all face the same way, and rolling around in the large bed naked, careful to leave it after a night's sleep much the way she found it except for a long red hair from her head nestled among the sheets. 

This turns out to be the home of Martin (Stephen Rea), a widowed man of not quite apparent occupation, though he might be primarily a lobsterman, as he has a few traps near his house, and goes off for daylong trips or so perhaps to check and harvest more distant snares. He returns to his house to find Anne sitting on a bench outside; she snarls at him when he asks her name, and in sudden anger he kicks the bench hard enough to knock her off it, suggesting she needn't be so rude. That bit of pleasantry aside, they soon fall into a mutual agreement, that he'll feed her if she helps him with his garden. A garden full of vegetables that must be very tolerant of salt not only from the sea air, but from the masses of seaweed he uses as mulch, which the film takes special care to display being shifted about by Anne's hands. Since neither party is as much a conversationalist as a music lover and reader, they agree to have a relation in which they ask Nothing Personal of each other, nor tell...whether it be personal history nor emotional support. But Martin can't abide Anne's living out of her tent on a patch of his fields for long, and installs her in a guest room in his house; he also seems to be afflicted by something that at first looks like it might be simple drunkenness, but quickly is revealed to be an unspecified medical condition, controlled to some extent by prescription drugs, but which could kill him. After their first breakthroughs in cooking for each other and beginning to chat each other up at meals, he asks her to watch over him one night, for fear that he might die. She agrees...they spend the night in bed together, but it is purposefully left vague whether they engaged in actual sexual activity at any time during the night.


The film continues, thus, often wittily and always picturesquely limning their ever-more intimate relation, as they have a night on the small town nearby and continue to grow more domestic...and they learn about each other, both breaching the other's trust a bit in doing so. (The film has chapter headings that work in theoretically reverse chronological order in relation to the events portrayed, so that their first meeting occurs in the chapter entitled "The End of the Affair.")

***[Climactic events described below; though plot is not the strength of this film.]

After a brief incident that leaves her slightly frightened of him, and him apparently a bit disturbed at his own aggression toward her, they approach the likelihood of a long-term romantic and sexual affair, at which point he somehow (overdose? underdose?) commits a quiet suicide, leaving his house and possessions to her with a note that he'd made it all legal before offing himself. She then takes her leave, and checks in to a Spanish hotel in the closing scene, alone again. 

Meanwhile, One More Train to Rob is not nearly an allusive, mostly two-person drama, but instead a very boldly-stated, at times overstated, large (and impressive) cast going about various sorts of frequently illegitimate business in Gold Rush California. A crew of ambitious and devious train robbers (led by George Peppard's Harker Fleet and to some extent by John Vernon's Timothy X. Nolan and Diana Muldaur's Katy) have made an impressive haul, only to have Fleet caught off-guard by a young woman claiming he'd impregnated her, and her two brothers ready to make sure Fleet marries her. This leads to Fleet almost inadvertently assaulting a police officer, and sentenced to a chain gang for three years...of which he serves slightly less for good behavior. On his way back to the town where Katy, his girlfriend, and Nolan are likely to have his share of the proceeds stashed away, Fleet comes across deputies from the town attempting to steal gold from a Chinese immigrant Tong mining camp; Fleet helps the Chinese miners foil the robbery and a kidnap attempt, and with them takes the deputies into town under citizens' arrest; this attracts considerable attention from the townsfolk, including a young woman prostitute, Ah Toy (France Nuyen), who seems startled to see the Chinese men in town, and the utterly unappreciative sheriff. It turns out that Nolan and Katy have wed, and are the town's aristocracy now, employing among others the brother of one of the arrested deputies. Fleet determines that Nolan engineered his confrontation with the brothers and the lawman that led to his chain-gang sentence, and does his best to figure a method of revenge against Nolan that might get Katy back...and finds that making common cause with the Chinese miners while pretending to betray them for Nolan's benefit (and getting Ah Toy out of the prostitution contract she sold herself into with her madam, Marie Windsor, to finance her family's return to China some months before) are means to that end.

This 1971 release, written by William Roberts, Don Tait and Dick Nelson and directed by journeyman Andrew McLaglen, is a curious mix of elements, beyond its impressive cast. Early on, particularly, some of the humor involved in the robbery caper, and the events around it, is almost childishly broad, but that's leavened with a knowing concern with the uglier aspects of life as the characters live it, treating with racism, rigid social roles, and petty thuggishness in a relatively unblinking way. I saw it on Encore Western, with an almost "standard" "windowbox" 4:3 aspect ratio, and it didn't look too cropped, if at all, suggesting it was made with television showings in mind, even though it was given a theatrical release. Certainly the Chinese-American characters are portrayed in a positive light, without making them into plaster saints; the sexual components to the principals' interaction isn't slighted nor even oversimplified, once past the opening attempts at easy jokes, and even the strained camaraderie between Fleet and Nolan is given some depth.

And what makes these two rather good, not quite excellent films an interesting contrast is the degree to which they embody the yearnings of a lot of women and of men, in ways that are not so very often laid out thus. Anne, in Nothing Personal, seeks to be a free agent, unencumbered by her previous life or anything else, if she can help it...she's a pretty young woman, but also autonomous and proudly so, not about to take guff from anyone, ready to make her way on her own or in as equal a partnership as possible with a compatible spirit...and when she finds such a spirit, she's both willing to make a life with him, or not, as he chooses (it doesn't hurt, from the point of view of the identifying audience, that she could enchant a man and also have done so with one willing to sacrifice for her benefit). Ultimately, she remains her own woman, not caught in the interconnections that stereotypically define a woman's role in nearly every society, even more than they do a man's. Meanwhile, in One More Train, both Nolan from the outset and eventually Fleet see that what will bring them contentment is not the itinerant life of confidence trickstering and related sorts of theft, but settling down and establishing domestic and communal roots, taking a permanent place in society...something the Chinese men, and Ah Toy, are also striving to achieve. While the latter story is a bit more common than the former, particularly in film neither is the usual trend, where men are questing and women are nesting, entirely too often. 

Janet Varney and Alison Rosen

Ophira Eisenberg

Adding to the long (and still reasonably accurate) list of (mostly comic) podcasts and radio series I listen to, I'll slip in a citation here for Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend, the personal podcast of collaborator on, and news anchor for, the Adam Carolla series, Alison Rosen. I first heard Rosen in conversation with comedian, actor, HuffPostLive newschat anchor and comedy festival organizer Janet Varney, who has a podcast, The JV Club,  on the Nerdist network, devoted to quizzing women who've met at least some of their lofty goals...about how they managed to do just that, and how they managed to survive their teen years and young adulthood to do so. And NPR decided they wanted another comedy quiz show--hey, if the BBC can have several--so added the rather charming and certainly geekish Ask Me Another with Ophira Eisenberg as host to their lineup. Worth a listen. 

tv and podcast notes: Tonight!: 23 October: Presidential Candidates Debate: Dr. Jill Stein (G), Gov. Gary Johnson (L), US Rep. Virgil Goode (C), Mayor Rocky Anderson (J); seasonal podcasts: BEYOND BELIEF and del Toro, Hodgson and more; Link TV and KCET (Los Angeles) merge

The three small-party candidates who could (theoretically) receive enough electoral votes to win the presidency, and the candidate of the next most "ballot-accessible" party, will be debating in a session moderated by Larry King, October 23, from Chicago.  The debate proper is scheduled to start at 8:55p ET (7:55 CT) for the live feeds on Link TV, C-SPAN (which also has an archive of video related to the four candidates at the debate) , Al-Jazeera English, RT (Russia Today), and various streaming services including King's regular employers at Ora.tv.



Jill Stein gives a shadow state of the union address:


Gary Johnson responds to the "town hall" debate questions:

Meanwhile, Link TV, which I mention on-blog from time to time, a small-budget leftist channel (most visible on DirecTV and the Dish Network) with an interesting mix of international dramatic films, impressive dramatic series such as Borgen, the Israeli sitcom Arab Labor and The Team: Kenya, documentaries and news programming from around the world, has just merged with KCET, the Los Angeles independent public broadcasting channel that had been one of the founding members and most-productive contributors to PBS, before disaffiliation in 2010. I suspect that the plan to run Link on one of KCET's digital feeds in LA is simply the beginning of a project to offer Link as a national network, something Link has attempted in a small way over the last decade, when it has been broadcast by stations in the Washington, DC, area and Philadelphia, and it has served as the source of overnight programming for KRCB in the San Francisco Bay Area for years. Some of the more mature content, particularly of the dramatic films, will probably require rescheduling, to bring them in line with "safe harbor" requirements the FCC holds (where such material is broadcastable in late nights). The synergy between the two, one hopes, will flourish...though I also hope that KCET doesn't choose to replace MHz Worldview in LA with Link...

Meanwhile, too quickly, I'll also continue to urge you to check out the consistently Noel Cowardesque charm of The Thrilling Adventure Hour's Beyond Belief series, involving Sadie and Frank Doyle (Paget Brewster and Paul F. Tompkins), a bibulous and ever mutually doting Nick and Nora Charles of psychic detectives...the most recent adventure, "The Haunting of Howard Schroeder," is typically clever and engaging. And while you're at the Nerdist site and in a seasonal mood, why not audit the mutual interview with Guillermo del Toro, Joel Hodgson, and Travis Beacham at the NYC ComicCom, this month. I doubt you'll be too disappointed, if the guest list sounds tempting (but I'd definitely check Beyond Belief first).

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: adding a Wednesday link

Bill Crider: The Blackboard Jungle

Brian Arnold: All the Hidden Endings to Marvel Comics Avengers Prequels in One Convenient Place

Ed Gorman: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (several adaptations); Louie

Evan Lewis: The Cocoanuts

Gerald So: Breaking In

Iba Dawson: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

James Reasoner: Good Morning, World

Juri Nummelin: Trance (1998/99) (aka The Eternal aka The Eternal: Kiss of the Mummy)

Kate Laity: Lumottu (Enchanted)

Marty McKee: Lobo: "Orly's Hot Skates"

Randy Johnson: Whistling in the Dark


Ron Scheer: Last Stand at Saber River

Scott Cupp: Under the Mountain

Todd Mason: Updated (and expanded) podcast listings, films on television, reading au naturel: see below

Yvette Banek: The List of Adrian Messenger

Related matter:

BV Lawson: Media Murder

Elizabeth Foxwell: Ransom Center on the papers of Nicholas Ray

George Kelley: The Worst Movies of 2011 So Far

Jackie Kashian: Crazy Stupid Love

John Charles: All-Night Drive-In Marathons

Patti Abbott: Point Blank

Rebecca O'Malley: Netflix Streaming picks

Stacia Jones: September Movies to Watch For [on cable]


Todd Mason:

American Public Television, the syndicator which offers such programs as Globe Trekker, Ebert Presents At the Movies, and Rosemary and Thyme, also has been offering to US public broadcasting stations a film package, New Classics and Old Favorites, for several years, and now is repackaging their film offers as the Hollywood Stars Package, leading off in September with two of the Thin Man films, the first one and After the Thin Man.

The October (further) offers include Annie Get Your Gun, The Music Man, The Nun's Story, and the second Inspector Clouseau film, A Shot in the Dark. Nothing particularly obscure so far, not even when compared to such broadcast packages as one find on the digital networks Antenna TV and ThisTV, but unlike their offerings, nothing will be panned and scanned nor edited nor interrupted by commercials, and it's a good set of films, appearing on most PBS and indy public stations on Saturday nights. (Even the Encore film channels are presented by some cable systems in a rigid "windowbox" format that takes away some of their considerable charm...and cable station IFC's decision to take on commercial interruptions to their films, probably a necessity financially, is otherwise charmless.)

Rather more static fun (if Not Safe for Work in most environments), for those who enjoy mildly exhibitionistic photography of women readers, is the Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society, who are not co-ed (no beefcake that I've seen so far, unless I've simply overlooked it), don't appear to actually appreciate pulp (so much as the new large-format Hard Case Crime volumes), but are certainly topless clothing-wise and hoping you'll enjoy seeing them thus.

...and here's a further update of a previous post from me, given a great broadening of the menu of podcasts offered by several of the podcast sites:
BBC Radio 4's Comedy page...access to (at least this week's set of) BBC audio sketch shows and sitcoms. BBC Radio 7 (RIP) has been replaced by BBC Radio 4 Extra, which also takes some repeats from 4 and adds some more material, including television soundtracks and radio adaptations of television material.

Comedy and Everything Else, Jimmy Dore and Stef Zamarano's podcast (which sometimes cross-riffs with Dore's Pacifica Radio series, audible via Jimmy Dore Comedy), notable for a pronounced though very much not doctrinaire leftist stance, and a lot of good food (people are eating a little less on mic these days).

The former Comedy Death Ray Radio, now Comedy Bang Bang, Scott Aukerman's interview, sketch and music showcase...and now the anchor of a group of podcasts. Bang Bang is a more elaborate showcases for improv parody-character sketches than most of the podcasts noted here, which often are the funniest bits. In fact, an episode in which Jimmy Pardo and his regulars filled in as hosts, and featuring an extended improv by Maria Bamford and Paul Gilmartin and music from the charming Garfunkel & Oates, might still be my favorite. Also on the Earwolf pages is the Sklar Brothers' sports and comedy podcast Sklarbro Country is also charming, if a bit literally too inside baseball, etc., to sustain my attention as readily; however, Howard Kremer and Kulap Vilaysack's Who Charted? is among the most charming and relaxed, as well as funny, podcasts you're likely to encounter, wherein a guest is brought on to interact with items from the Most Popular/Bestselling lists in various sorts of pop culture and related matters. The pun-laden, somewhat Nick Dangeresque Mike Detective, with Rob Heubel and Grey DeLisle, is archived here, and a variety of other new and ongoing series can be accessed and heard, including one, The Wolf Den, which is about the business of podcasting rather than a comedy show per se. Other Earwolf podcasts that have begun in the last several months are the intentionally retro The Apple Sisters, Tig Notaro and friends' low-key philosophical discussion Professor Blastoff, and Bob Ducca's somewhat more hangdog approach to Stuat Smalley-style self-affirmation...along with the catch-all Earwolf Presents.

Dork Forest Radio, Jackie Kashian's formerly lo-fi podcast (on lo-fi BlogTalkRadio) is a charming delving into all kinds of geekery, or what Kashian dubs the Dork Forest. (See also, The Nerdist) Uniquely among these podcasts, when on BlogTalk Radio, there was a live chatroom running alongside the live podcast...Kashian is trying to decide what she'll do about that with the new, undistorted-audio format. Kashian is also probably the most gracious of podcast hosts, though unafraid of asking, usually politely and/or self-deprecatingly, hard questions.

Doug Loves Movies, Doug Benson's gameshow/interview podcast, the game usually all about trying to guess a movie title with as few clues as possible from Leonard Maltin's film-guides. Benson also usually has a few words to say about recent viewing experiences, and the guests are usually a mix of comedians, actors (Elisabeth Shue confirmed your suspicions about Paul Verhoeven), and occasionally Leonard Maltin.

Girl on Guy, Aisha Tyler's new podcast, is basically a freewheeling interview with the comedian and actress, usually with comedians. As energetic as you might suspect...

Harry Shearer's Le Show sometimes is dismissed or criticized out of hand by folks on some of the podcasts...podcasts that probably wouldn't've existed without the loooong-standing example of Shearer's mix of music, monolog, and sketches (almost always one-person productions in which Shearer does all the voices). Shearer's wife, the excellent jazz-pop singer Judith Owen, is often heard in the musical segments.

The Long Shot, an established but perhaps still underappreciated podcast featuring the disparate quartet of comedians Eddie Pepitone, Sean Conroy, Jamie Flam, and Amber Kenny, who amusingly, acerbically chat, do audio sketches, and feature guests...so disparate that guest Tig Notaro asked them, "How do you all even know each other?"

The Mental Illness Happy Hour, Paul Gilmartin's relatively new interview program, has now fixed its RSS feed, and is an earnest, but not completely grim by any means, listening experience...the iTunes link is in for those who do Apple.

The Nerdist podcast, a key component of the larger Nerdist.com, features a crew spearheaded by Chris Hardwick, whose credits run from standup to cohosting Wired Science on PBS; he's most regularly visible on G4, and he and his partners, or he alone, interview a range of guests only slightly less wide-ranging than Jackie Kashian (see The Dork Forest). Hardwick in one episode railed against those who criticize him for kissing his guests' asses, correctly noting that what could be cynically (if unsurprisingly) misconstrued thus is his genuine enthusiasm for speaking with the guests, riffing cheerfully, and generally trying to share his passions. A video version of this series will begin on cable channel BBC America soon...and this site has been as busy as Earwolf in adding new podcasts to its ranks, including The Indoor Kids (dealing mostly with electronic gaming and related matters), Sex Nerd Sandra, Sandra Daugherty's sex-ed podcast (perhaps the furthest from pure comedy, while still funny and charming), and Making It with Riki Lindhome, which despite the potentially most-enticing interpretation of that title is an interview series wherein guests tell how they've achieved what they have in their careers in the arts. The Todd Glass Show is a new project by an old podcaster, the former co-host of Comedy and Everything Else, and perhaps the most soundscape-exploratory of the podcasts cited here.


Never Not Funny, Jimmy Pardo's podcast, usually featuring Matt Belknap, the proprietor of A Special Thing, and one of the oldest of the continuing series (with Kashian's Dork Forest). The link is to the free feed, as NNF offers a free first twenty or so minutes as an enticement, then offers the rest of a given episode only to paying subscribers...Pardo's mock aggression, almost always immediately self-deflated, mixes well with his energetic, slightly retro persona. This has a spinoff podcast, conducted by frequent guest Pat Francis, Rock Solid.

The Pod F. Tomcast, Paul F. Tompkins's elaborate performance and interview podcast, is as distinctive as his performances tend to be.

Pop My Culture is duo of young actor/comedians, Vanessa Ragland and Cole Stratton, doing interviews and related matter with an an eclectic set of performers and others in and around, well, pop culture, usually at the comedic end...













The Smartest Man in the World, Greg Proops's nightclub-based podcast, appears irregularly, and can be somewhat in and out...but is always worth the listen.

The Sound of Young America, etc.: MaximumFun.org gets one podcasts of TSOYA elements and also the more informal and uncensored Jordan, Jesse, Go! among other bits and pieces, including John Hodgman's longrunning Judge John Hodgman moot court, the Canadian Stop Podcasting Yourself and the college-station years of TSOYA, and archival bits from San Francisco legends Mal Sharpe and James Coyle. Colin Marshall's text reviews of podcasts are wide-ranging and thoughtful, as well as frequently funny.

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me..., NPR's primary humor series (unless we consider Car Talk also primarily a humor series), remains a pleasant and frequently hilarious news-quiz game show, with comedians and writers competing for meaningless points, and guests competing on behalf of audience members. The comparable PRI series Whad'Ya Know?, features a somewhat more rambling style and fewer guests in the gameshow seqments, though also features a fine jazz combo. CBC's comedy and whimsy series Wiretap also gets a fair amount of clearance in the States...and averages perhaps a bit better in that wise than such more popular US series A Prairie Home Companion or This American Life. I'll put in a plug here for the not quite primarily humorous series On the Media and pop-science series RadioLab. Just a notch below these is Studio 360.

Weezy and the Swish is the only "dead" podcast that I list here (at least so far), Louise Palanker and Laura Swisher's project, one of the earlier comedian podcasts, and still one of the few not hosted mostly and entirely by Caucasian men. A smattering of their episodes archived here.

WTF, the Marc Maron podcast, one of the most attention-getting as Maron probes himself and his guests usually a bit more relentlessly, yet for the most part professionally (Maron's experience on Air America and with BreakRoom Live tells) than most of his peers. A mixture of usually one-on-one interviews interspersed with a sporadic set of talk-show-style multi-guest live episodes, both eminently worth catching. Public radio stations will have access to a short series extracted from this series, from PRX, the Public Radio Exchange (not to be confused with PRI, PRX is the rising distributor which was kind enough to take on Sound Opinions, the inept Chicago-based rock music-discussion series which PRI dropped, along with such better work as The Moth).

...and for more pointers to comedy audio and more, see Punchline magazine online...

Iris Bahr, and THE UNCHOSEN ONES

Podcasts are really digging in this summer...Jackie Kashian's The Dork Forest has been doing even better (and deeply autobiographical) episodes of late (whether dealing with high-school violence or Kashian's recent tour of military bases in the Arab world), and Iris Bahr was the guest on today's WTF with Marc Maron, and I enjoyed that a lot, and so sought this below out, which I enjoyed just about as well...and having seen few scraps of her running character for an HD Net sketch comedy series, Svetlana, I'll be trying to catch that, as well, as I finally have regular access to a cable system which offers HD Net (even if they think they don't have to carry the local clearance of MHz WorldView, something I'm about to take up with them).

As with the HD Net show, Bahr plays several characters here, including a BBC TV documentarian and a relatively hapless young woman on a J-Date marriage tour, as they make their way through Israel:

The Unchosen Ones by Iris Bahr from Guy Ross on Vimeo.

More radio and podcast links: comedy and comedians

BBC Radio 4's Comedy page...access to (at least this week's set of) BBC audio sketch shows and sitcoms. BBC Radio 7 takes some repeats from 4 and adds some more material.

Comedy and Everything Else, Jimmy Dore and Stef Zamarano's podcast (which sometimes cross-riffs with Dore's Pacifica Radio series), notable for a pronounced though very much not doctrinaire leftist stance, and a lot of good food.

Comedy Death Ray Radio, Scott Aukerman's interview, sketch and music showcase...originally comedy/novelty music for the most part, but increasingly moving away from that as the better comedy music is growing scarce. Perhaps the most uneven of the programs listed here...can drag a bit, particularly in the lesser sessions of Aukerman's recurring games of "Would You Rather...", but also can be devastatingly hilarious...more elaborate showcases for improv parody-character sketches than most of the podcasts, as well, which often are the funniest bits. In fact, an episode in which Jimmy Pardo and his regulars filled in as hosts, and featuring an extended improv by Maria Bamford and Paul Gilmartin and music from the charming Garfunkel & Oates, might still be my favorite. Also on the Earwolf pages, the Sklar Brothers' sports and comedy podcast Sklarbro Country is also charming, if a bit literally too inside baseball, etc., to sustain my attention as readily.

Dork Forest Radio, Jackie Kashian's formerly lo-fi podcast (on lo-fi BlogTalkRadio) is a charming delving into all kinds of geekery, or what Kashian dubs the Dork Forest. (See also, The Nerdist) Uniquely among these podcasts, when on BlogTalk Radio, there was a live chatroom running alongside the live podcast...Kashian is trying to decide what she'll do about that with the new, undistorted-audio format. Kashian is also probably the most gentle of podcast hosts, though unafraid of asking, usually politely and/or self-deprecatingly, the hard questions.

Doug Loves Movies, Doug Benson's gameshow/interview podcast, the game usually all about trying to guess a movie title with as few clues as possible from Leonard Maltin's film-guides. Benson also usually has a few words to say about recent viewing experiences, and the guests are usually a mix of comedians, actors (Elisabeth Shue confirmed your suspicions about Paul Verhoeven), and occasionally Leonard Maltin.

The Firesign Theater Radio Hour as dusted off and presented by WFMU
The Firesigns refined and concentrated their best work on their records, from Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him onward, with the exception of the radio-show sampler Dear Friends where even there most of the examples taken are no longer than five minutes...the hours could ramble (even more!), but do demonstrate the influences ranging from Bob and Ray through Ken Nordine to the Goons. So far, I like the third one best. But I at least like them all.

Harry Shearer's Le Show sometimes is dismissed or criticizaed out of hand by folks on some of the podcasts...podcasts that probably wouldn't've existed without the Loooong-standing example of Shearer's mix of music, monolog, and sketches (almost always one-person prductions in which Shearer does all the voices). Shearer's wife, the excellent jazz-pop singer Judith Owen, is often heard in the musical segments.

The Long Shot, a relatively new podcast featuring the disparate quartet of comedians Eddie Pepitone, Sean Conroy, Jamie Flam, and Amber Kenny, who amusingly, acerbically chat, do audio sketches, and feature guests...so disparate that guest Tig Notaro asked them, "How do you all even know each other?"

The Nerdist podcast, a key component of the larger Nerdist.com, features a crew spearheaded by Chris Hardwick, whose credits run from standup to cohosting Wired Science on PBS; he's most regularly visible on G4, and he and his partners, or he alone, interview a range of guests only slightly less wide-ranging than Jackie Kashian (see The Dork Forest). Hardwick in the most recent episode railed against those who criticize him for kissing his guests' asses, correctly noting that what could be cynically (if unsurprisingly) miscontrued thus is his genuine enthusiasm for speaking with the guests, riffing cheerfully, and generally trying to share his passions.

Never Not Funny, Jimmy Pardo's podcast, usually featuring Matt Belknap, the proprietor of A Special Thing, and one of the oldest of the continuing series (with Kashian's Dork Forest). The link is to the free feed, as NNF offers a free first twenty or so minutes as an enticement, then offers the rest of a given episode only to paying subscribers...Pardo's mock aggression, almost always immediately self-deflated, mixes well with his slightly retro persona.

The Pod F. Tomcast, Paul F. Tompkins's new performance and interview podcast, is as distinctive as his performances tend to be...at least so far, with only two episodes up so far.

The Sound of Young America, etc.: MaximumFun.org gets one podcasts of TSOYA elements and also the more informal and uncensored Jordan, Jesse, Go! among other bits and pieces, including the Canadian Stop Podcasting Yourself and the college-station years of TSOYA, and archival bits from San Francisco legends Mal Sharpe and James Coyle. Colin Marshall's text reviews of podcasts are wide-ranging and thoughtful, as well as frequently funny.

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me..., NPR's primary humor series (unless we consider Car Talk also primarily a humor series), remains a pleasant and frequently hilarious news-quiz game show, with comedians and writers competing for meaningless points, and guests competing on behalf of audience members. The comparable PRI series Whad'Ya Know?, features a somewhat more rambling style and fewer guests in the gameshow seqments, though also features a fine jazz combo. CBC's comedy and whimsy series Wiretap also gets a fair amount of clearance in the States...and averages perhaps a bit better in that wise than such more popular US series A Prairie Home Companion or This American Life. I'll put in a plug here for the not quite primarily humorous series On the Media and pop-science series RadioLab. Just a notch below these is Studio 360.

Weezy and the Swish is the only "dead" podcast that I list here (at least so far), Louise Palanker and Laura Swisher's project, one of the earlier comedian podcasts, and still one of the few not hosted mostly and entirely by Caucasian men. A smattering of their episodes archived here.

WTF, the Marc Maron podcast, one of the most attention-getting as Maron probes himself and his guests usually a bit more relentlessly, yet for the most part professionally (Maron's experience on Air America and with BreakRoom Live tells) than most of his peers. A mixture of usually one-on-one interviews interspersed with a sporadic set of talk-show-style multi-guest live episodes, both eminently worth catching.

...and for more pointers to comedy audio and more, see Punchline magazine online...