WTF

13 posts

Marc Maron Onstage: Faking It As a Matter of Integrity

287x500_5269885780_a3ba18d3b3 (67pct)For dedicated fans of podcast savant Marc Maron, it can be a real challenge to list all the amazing aspects of his WTF podcast.

First there are the jokes; those are pretty good. Then there are the incredibly revealing interviews with comics and other performers.

Plus there’s the astonishingly consistent quality of those conversations: By now most of Maron’s guests know what to expect from the interviews, so they could easily prepare some boilerplate responses — but almost none of them does. Also there’s the incredible volume of podcast material available: 375 WTF episodes and counting, each one an hour long or more. And there’s the fact that practically every WTF episode has been made available (temporarily) for free — which for a product of this impossibly high quality seems to defy not just the rules of show business, but of capitalism itself. Continue reading

Podcast Savant Marc Maron… on Television? WTF!

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I don’t know how many of my compatriots realize this — but we currently live in a golden age of American comedy. And this glittering era doesn’t follow from anything projected onto various screens by Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey or Tina Fey. Nor is it due to anything written or directed by Seth MacFarlane or Judd Apatow. And it’s not because Charlie Sheen left Two and a Half Men, finally allowing the flagship brand of televised network comedy (cough!) to reach its true potential.

Instead this golden age has resulted because Marc Maron — a formerly little-known standup comedian with more than two decades of performing experience, but little lasting success — has been producing his uniquely tense and revealing comedy podcast for more than three years now. Continue reading

17 Crazy and Creative Ways to Ask for a Date

When I first ran across this handy guide by Barbara Seegmiller in a used bookstore a year ago, I fell in love with its kooky vintage greatness, for it is certainly creative and fun-loving and by following its rules you’ll definitely get…results. Published in 1986 with help from the English Department of Brigham Young University, it features a stern lecture from the then Associate Dean of BYU on the pitfalls of boredom in youth and boy does it deliver.

Packed with over 300 suggestions by the young in Seegmiller’s community on how to win over that special someone, CWtAfaD undulates wildly between the endearingly corny bad puns/clean cut fun of the ‘80s (i.e. “Give the person a pillow and with a note that says ‘Jane, I’d like you to go to the ___ with me. SLEEP ON IT, and then let me know!’”) and the clinically insane. Continue reading

Herman Cain’s New Ad Heavy on Smoking, Smokescreens

One of the joys of the expansive, still terribly unsettled Republican Presidential field is that everyone with even a whiff of a chance is still making speeches, collecting money, and turning out advertising.

When the advertising is from the ‘minds’ behind the Herman Cain campaign, the possibilities are endless. And mindless. Video after the jump. Continue reading

Brothers and Sisters

My mom has seven siblings. My dad has three. I have one. Can you imagine having 150? As the New York Times recently reported, Cynthia Daily wanted to find some her child’s half siblings. (She and her partner used a sperm donor to conceive.) Apparently Daily’s child has 150 half-siblings.

“Today there are 150 children, all conceived with sperm from one donor, in this group of half siblings, and more are on the way. “It’s wild when we see them all together — they all look alike,” said Ms. Daily, 48, a social worker in the Washington area who sometimes vacations with other families in her son’s group.Continue reading