Archive | Michael Showalter
Episode 2: The Biffnies
My interview with Michael Showalter, ep 1
So I took down the previous version and put this one up instead. It’s still processing so give it a little while before clicking. I think it’s more watchable. I might put the other one up again though. I don’t know. I’m unpredictable. Trying to catch me is like trying to catch a wave upon the sand.
Interviews with Michael Showalter, part 1
So yesterday I interviewed Michael Showalter (Stella, The State, Wet Hot American Summer) for about an hour and now I have all this footage which I’m trying to figure out how to best cut into a series of awesome and hard-hitting interviews. Also, we plan to do more since we barely scratched the surface of all the important things we wanted to talk about like reality TV and other TV. Also, sexual fetishes. Anyway, as I was putting together the first one, above, I was faced with the choice of editing it so it’s a little slicker and professional seeming and probably faster paced or leaving in the super awkward sort of in-between exchanges which I did because that’s the closest in spirit to the original radio interviews and I was thinking this will be like those radio interviews brought to life. And yet today I’m thinking maybe a little of ME goes a long way and also, maybe that wasn’t the best part of those radio interviews anyway. Also, I’m torn because fans of me (hi guys!) who are watching these will probably like (?) the beginning stuff but then fans of Michael Showalter will just want more of him and WHAT TO DO? This is why I need a professional editor. Also, someone to make opening titles. And a theme song. Also I should fix a lot of those titles since the fonts are all weird.
So maybe I’ll go back and whittle down this interview and then we can do a comparison? Or maybe I won’t. Hm.
Old radio interviews with Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black
In honor of turning over a new leaf and focusing on the future, I decided to repost some interviews from three or four years ago. Two years ago? I forget when these were. Mostly I did this because I realized I could grab the code and put them here and that they weren’t stuck, like pubic hairs in amber, on my fossilized MySpace page. Jesus Christ, what kind of MySpace page do I have anyway? That is the appropriate question. Anyway, I can’t actually bear to listen to these, but maybe you can. They were the first radio interviews I’d ever conducted, by the way, so be gentle!
I'd make a shitty chicken
By Alison Rosen on February 14, 2009 in chickens, HIGHLY SPECIFIC SCENARIOS INVOLVING DUCKS, Michael Showalter, pigeon sex, poultry, vlogs
A wise chicken doesn’t cackle until she lays an egg or something, but that’s not my style and plus if I were a chicken I’d much rather be the kind that plays piano. Probably something light, like Debussy. I know what you’re thinking: Do I take tips? Yes I do. I refer you to the tip jar on the side of my baby grand. They wanted to get me a concert grand since I’m performing at a pretty big concert hall however I explained that I wasn’t the biggest chicken (I actually said I wasn’t the biggest “cock on the walk” and we all had a good laugh at that) and therefore a concert grand would be using a hatchet to remove a fly from my friend’s beak.
I mean, I want the main thing you notice on that stage to be me and my amazing plumage first, then my romantic (and I mean that in the Platonic sense of the word) and moving playing, and then the light show and then you are free to notice the piano. And the tip jar. Please notice that. But I mean, I don’t want to be upstaged by my instrument.
But back to the tip jar. If you aren’t able to ascend the steps at Carnegie Hall (yes, that’s where I’m performing the works of Debussy) then we’re sending a collection plate out into the crowd.
What’s that? There aren’t any steps? I simply flap my wings and fly over the orchestra pit to get to the stage but I don’t really know how it would work for you. And I know what you’re thinking again: You’re wondering why I’m flying over the orchestra pit instead of entering the stage from backstage where I’ll be nibbling on various vittles kept warm on chafing dishes, as per my contract rider? Look, I’m a pretty down the earth chicken and I find that when I take the stage from the audience it really starts things off on the right foot. It’s my way of saying that I don’t OWN the music. I’m merely a vessel through which it speaks/lives/breathes.
Am I getting too lofty? I do that sometimes. In the coop where I periodically pass the time I’m kind of known as an intellectual. Some think I’m snobby but I’m really not. I just want to know what came before me, and what came after me, and how I fit in.
I read a lot of Nietzsche. I went through an Orwell phase but it hit a little close to home, as you can probably imagine.
1984. It was the year of my birth. Why, what did you think I was referring to?
Anyway, I have to go practice on my Casio keyboard which I keep in my mobile dressing room. A lot of people wonder how I practice and that’s how.
Oh and P.S. it looks as if I’ll be interviewing a certain Michael Showalter in a video/vlog soon. Happy Valentine’s Day!
NOTE: If you want to hear the old radio interviews I did with Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black go to my seldom-updated Myspace page and scroll down on the right side, after the videos, and there is a gray box with the interviews.