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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.

Nov 24, 2018

This week’s episode is a bit different from previous episodes, in that it doesn’t feature an interview with one person about their work. For the Thanksgiving week episode, I am celebrating a couple of things for which I feel very thankful, and that it the existence of The Kids In the Hall and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Both happen to be celebrating 30th anniversaries in television this year, so it seemed fitting to put them together. The Kids In the Hall first came together as a group in 1984, but their pilot episodes debuted in October of 1988, just about a month before Mystery Science Theater 3000 began on Thanksgiving day, November 24. I had not previously thought of these two shows as linked, but it warms my heart to think of all of this wonderfulness being revealed to the world in the same year. 

So to celebrate, I asked two of the funniest and most thoughtful pop culture ponderers I know, comedians Ken Reid and Lamont Price, to come to the Podcast Kitchen and talk about the history of The Kids In the Hall and Mystery Science Theater, and their own personal thoughts and experiences with the show. It’s a long episode, and we wind up tangenting off on everything from Eddie Murphy and The Klumps to The A-Team movie. So if you’re traveling for the season, just put this on your electronic audio device and we’ll help get you where you need to go.