Illustration by GARY TAXALI© BY JONATHAN VALANIA Comedian W. Kamau Bell has been fighting the good fight in the stand-up comedy trenches of San Francisco since the phat pants ’90s. It was there that Chris Rock discovered him and eventually brokered a deal with FX for Bell to have his own TV show. In 2012, Totally Biased, a much-buzzed-about late night sketch comedy show starring Bell and produced by Rock, debuted to strong reviews and a big enough viewership to justify a second season until its ill-advised migration from FX to FXX, subsequent plummet in audience share and ensuing cancellation […]
Q&A: Talking Trash, Twitter, ESPN, & Appetite For Self-Destruction w/ Badboy Funnyman Artie Lange
“Lamentations Of A Jersey Prince” by AUGIE PAGAN BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of his show at the Keswick tomorrow night and in the wake of the The Great ESPN-Twitter Reverse Mandingo Masturbation Fantasy Fiasco, we got badboy fatass funnyman Artie Lange on the horn. DISCUSSED: The Eagles, The Fightins, Riley Cooper, Woody Allen, robbing banks, opiate addiction, the ESPN-TWITTER fiasco, why he’s not backing down, why he shouldn’t, the struggle to stay sober in a business full of “hot babes with blow,” falling off the wagon, John Candy, Chris Farley, his work with Wounded Warriors, the double standard of […]
THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST: Talking Dope, Arson And Iron Maiden With JJL’s Jay Joseph Laughlin
L-R: Derek Ziglenski, Jay Laughlin, Pete Girgenti/Photo by CHUCKLES BY JONATHAN VALANIA Jay Laughlin has been a fixture of the Greater Philadelphia music scene since the late ’80s, beginning with the posthumously beloved straight edge hardcore band Turning Point, which morphed into beloved pedal-hopping dream-pop merchants Lenola, which eventually morphed into the electro-psych-pop of Like A Fox. Laughlin’s new band, JJL, marks a return to the devil-horned heaviosity of his gloriously misspent south Jersey youth. JJL will celebrate the release of The Tiger, their debut EP, with a record release show at Johnny Brenda’s tomorrow night. Recently, we sat down […]
Q&A: Ira Glass, Host Of This American Life
Photo by STUART MULLENBERG BY JONATHAN VALANIA A long time ago in a public radio galaxy far, far away called 1995, the median listener age was 87, nobody ever said um or like on the air, all stories ran just one way — front to back — and were narrated with the plummy-voiced elocution of the Founding Fathers, and semiotics was just one more thing Medicare refused to cover. Nineteen years, five Peabody Awards and 500-plus episodes of This American Life later, all that has changed, thanks to the post-post-modern vision, wry melancholia and casually precise broadcasting style of the […]
Q&A: Tig Notaro Will Not Go Quietly
BY JONATHAN VALANIA If Tig Notaro never existed we would have never thought to invent her, which not only points out the shortcomings of our imagination but also the depths of her originality. A tall drink of water in low-slung jeans with Billie Jean King hair, she speaks in a laconic drawl that is either medicated or chill to the point of Zen. She doesn’t so much tell jokes as construct these elaborate verbal Rube Goldberg Devices Of Funny and at the end, when you finally stop laughing, you’re like ‘I can’t believe that worked.’ If you’ve never heard […]
THE GOOD SHEPHERD: A Q&A With Globe-Trotting New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Last week we got New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on the horn to discuss his new book, A Path Appears, co-authored with his wife Sheryl WuDunn, which extols the innovative but largely un-heralded efforts of a dedicated few to leave the world a better place than they found it. Just a few days prior, Kristof had been at the center of a cultural storm that erupted in the wake of his appearance on REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER along with Ben Affleck and Sam Harris, so we gave him an opportunity to clarify some points […]
WRECKLESS ERIC: Q&A With Eric Wareheim, Philly Homeboy & Exactly One Half Of Tim & Eric
BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of the Tim And Eric & Dr. Steve Brule (aka John C. Reilly) 2014 Tour stopping in Philly on Friday for two sold out shows at The Keswick, we got Temple alum Eric Wareham on the horn. DISCUSSED: Their new show Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories, Twilight Zone, and the horror of the every day, Bob Odenkirk, Emmet Walsh, John C. Reilly, Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifanakis, Three Stooges, Dr. Steve Brule, Darkside, Fishtown, White Rainbow, and Philly soul. PHAWKER: The two episodes of Bedtime Stories, your new show on Adult Swim, that I watched […]
NOBLE SAVAGE: Q&A w/ Man Man’s Honus Honus
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published on October 30, 2013 BY JONATHAN VALANIA It’s not easy being the Frank Zappa/Captain Beefheart/Bonzo Dog Band/Butthole Surfers of your generation. Just ask Man Man mainman Ryan Kattner, aka Honus Honus. Five albums into an accidental career as the ringmaster of the weird beard three ring psychosexual psychedelic circus that is Man Man, he sounded a little down-in-the-mouth when he called last week from the back of a stinky rental van parked behind the club Man Man played later that night in glamorous and exotic Buffalo. “It smells like sweat socks and rotting food […]
ABOUT A GIRL: The Complete Magnet Magazine Q&A With Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace
EDITOR’S NOTE: I interviewed Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace for the cover story of issue 106 of MAGNET MAGAZINE. Because of space restrictions, more than 2000 words had to be cut from the Q&A. In advance of Against Me!’s performance at The Mann Center’s Skyline Stage tomorrow night, as well as the welcome news that Laura Jane Grace will be getting her own reality show, we are running the complete Q&A. All 7,200 words. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA In 2012, Tom Gabel, the 33-year-old year old frontman of Florida-based million-dollar major label punk band Against Me!, announced to the […]
EXCLUSIVE: Q&A With Neutral Milk’s Jeff Mangum
BY JONATHAN VALANIA In 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel released an album of hallucinatory folk-rock called In The Aeroplane Over The Sea that is, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, nothing short of a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Like Pet Sounds or My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless or Love’s Forever Changes, it is lightning caught in a bottle, one of those rare perfect albums that come along maybe once a decade. Or once a lifetime. In 1999, Jeff Mangum — Neutral Milk’s singer, songwriter and primary guitarist — disappeared from public life without explanation, declining all entreaties to […]
Q&A: Steve-O, The Jackest Of All Asses
AS TOLD TO JONATHAN VALANIA Steve-O of Jackass fame will be performing nightly at Helium Comedy Club from July 16th-19th, so we got him on the horn for one of our patented Phawker heart-to-hearts. DISCUSSED: Clown college, cocaine, stilt-walking, sobriety, his father being president of Coca Cola Brazil, things he’s put up his ass, suicide, Samuel Jackson, the permanent damage of his Jackassery, Ryan Dunne & Amy Schumer, psychiatric lockdown, veganism, kindness to animals and the importance of flossing after every meal. PHAWKER: So, you moved around a lot as a kid. Your dad was actually president of the […]
Q&A: Meet Bridget Everett, ‘C*nt-Rock’ SuperStar
BY CHIARA MATRICCINO If it’s true that well-behaved women rarely make history, comedian/cabaret singer/self-described “cunt-rock”-er Bridget Everett is one for the history books. She is large and in charge and refuses to apologize for it. Instead, she owns it. Owns the shit out of it, to be exact. Onstage, she brings new meaning to the saying “shake what your mama gave ya.” Hilarity invariably ensues. Everett grew up in Manhattan, Kansas, where the notion of becoming a celebrated cabaret performer in New York City was but a pipe a dream. And yet, that’s exactly what she’s done. In addition […]
BOOKS: Q&A With Joel Selvin, Author Of HERE COMES THE NIGHT: The Dark Soul Of Bert Berns & The Dirty Business Of Rhythm & Blues
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Bert Berns, the greatest songwriter/producer you never heard of, was not long for this world. Born with a congenital heart defect, he was told he would not live to see 21, and though he defied prevailing medical opinion, he was dead before he turned 39. Berns [PICTURED, ABOVE RIGHT didn’t start working in the music business until he was 30, but over the course of the next eight years he wrote and/or produced some of the greatest singles of all time: The Isley Brothers’ “Twist And Shout,” The Drifters’ “Under The Boardwalk,” Solomon Burke [PICTURED, ABOVE […]