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The Department of Tangents Podcast

Years ago, playing a sort of improv game with friends in which we all picked super powers based on our personalities, I dubbed myself “Tangent Lad.” I was not a very strong superhero, and I could not defeat a super villain on my own, but I could distract them with Monty Python quotes and football trivia. I have many times since apologized to an interview subject in my capacity as a journalist by saying, “I am either very good or very bad at tangents, depending on how you feel about tangents.”

I had a rough time coming up with the concept and naming this blog/podcast. I knew I wanted to create a place where I could address things I’m passionate about – comedy, music, and horror. Finding a name that communicated all three of those things proved a bit impossible. I bugged my friends, and they all tried to help. To no avail. Then I thought, maybe I’m approaching this from the wrong angle. Maybe my lack of focus should be the focus.

As a journalist, I have written for The Boston Globe since 2000, starting out writing CD reviews and then writing a regular column on comedy for seven and a half years. I still contribute there, and to Kirkus Reviews, and other publications. I’m also a musician, and released my debut full-length album, Blue Skies and Broken Arrows, in March of 2015. And I’ve been publishing short horror fiction for a couple of years.

I like to climb into things I love and see how they operate. That’s what the Department of Tangents is for. The main thing here is love. To talk about the things that make I’ve loved forever, and some new things that might stand the test and be around, at least for me, for decades to come. I’ve had to be critical in my writing at times, and it might not all be nonstop roses here, but in the end, what I really want to talk about is the good stuff. That’s why I will regularly write about things I think are “Perfect,” even if someone can demonstrate empirically that they are flawed. Still perfect to me.

Also, fish.

I hope you, dear anonymous surfer person, will come to expect only the highest-quality, free-range, grass-fed tangents. And I hope some of you love the same things I do and find it useful. Or at least a welcome distraction until the others get here.

Sep 21, 2016

In last Friday's <a href="http://nickzaino.com/departmentoftangents/2016/09/16/new-release-roundup-george-carlins-i-kinda-like-it-when-a-lot-of-people-die/" target="_blank">New Release Roundup, I reviewed the new George Carlin Album, <em>I Kinda Like It When A Lotta People Die</em></a>, archived tape of the special...


Sep 15, 2016

Happy to present to you my conversation with author, comedian, and musician <a href="http://www.davehillonline.com/" target="_blank">Dave Hill</a>. Hill is a busy guy these days. He just released his second book of essays, Dave Hill Doesn't Live Here Anymore, he's on the road doing stand-up and storytelling, and...


Sep 12, 2016

Earlier this year, producer and author Ian Brennan returned to the maximum security Zomba Prison in Malawi to record the prisoners performing their own music. Brennan had done this before, in 2013, when he and his wife, filmmaker and photographer, Marilena Delli recorded the first volume in this series, I Have No...