The brilliant and hilarious Sarah Vowell visited Toronto to read from her new book Wordy Shipmates today at the Harbourfront Center’s International Festival of Authors.
After a 20-minute reading from Shipmates, Vowell sat down for a conversation with journalist Ian Brown, and signed books for a long line of admirers.
As a political satire fan, I’m subjected to the same two angles in every piece of press coverage: “Does it have an impact?” and “Why is all so left-leaning?”
Of course, I’m guilty of covering that well-trodden piece of journalistic ground myself. I did an interview with Greg Proops just before the 2006 midterms, which remains of of my favourite interviews — the majority of which never made it into print.
In the past two days, I’ve been pimped out by the delightful Shecky Magazine, and had the pleasure of watching Jamie Kennedy’s documentary Heckler. The two events, for their own reasons, have brought the question to the front of my mind: what makes someone credible when it comes to knowledge of comedy, and gives them the “right” to be a critic?
In Heckler, many of the amateur and professional critics are dismissed because they don’t practice the art that they write about, something I was guilty of for many years.
Today is Thanksgiving here in Canada (what can I say, we’ve always been a little ahead of the curve). I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to how much we appreciate the comedy community we each associate ourselves with, whether it’s as a performer or as an audience member.
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Check The Apiary Monday morning for my recap of the New Yorker Festival’s discussion with Andy Borowitz, Samantha Bee from the Daily Show, The Onion’s Todd Hanson, Colbert Report Executive Producer Allison Silverman, and veteran SNL writer/producer Jim Downey.
(You really should be checking the Apiary every morning regardless, but that’s an issue for another day.)
Putting Stephen Colbert in a venue that only holds 450 people is a pretty sure way to guarantee a sold-out New Yorker Festival show. Not only were the tickets snapped up within an hour of the on-sale time, but droves of people waited a few hours at the Festival’s headquarters the day before the show to score one of 40 additional tickets. And the last ditch standby line? That began 4 hours before the show. (That wasn’t any of my concern, thankfully, as I waited at the front of the ticketholders line.)
