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The Department of Tangents Podcast

DoT EP101: Why Save MAD? with Michael Gerber and Ian Scott McGregor, plus New Music from Twin Peaks

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.

DoT EP101: Why Save MAD? with Michael Gerber and Ian Scott McGregor, plus New Music from Twin Peaks

Aug 8, 2019

In early July, rumors started to surface that MAD Magazine was going to cease publishing new material and just reprint old stuff with new covers. MAD has been around since 1952 and has influenced multiple generations of smart asses. The eulogies came quick and heavy, and they’re still coming, even though we’ve never gotten a terrible clearly statement about the magazine’s future. Everyone seems so sure it’s dead, but what happens next with the magazine seems far from certain.

I loved MAD when I was a kid, and I’m the proud owner of a rejection letter from sending in a bunch of ideas years ago. It was a formative publication for me. But what is MAD Magazine now, and why save it? That’s the question I asked of Michael Gerber, editor and publisher of the humor magazine The American Bystander, and Ian Scott McGregor, an actor and filmmaker with a very personal attachment to MAD dating back to the early 90s, when he began to meet and befriend the writers and publishers in New York. He has been giving out “Stay MAD” stickers and trying to rally readers to help save the book. Gerber is leading a team of investors trying to save it.

Since MAD has been around so long, parodying popular culture all the way, this conversation wound up covering everything from the comics code and the Red Scare right up to the current administration and the magazine’s recent “Ghastly Gun” Edward Gorey parody. The new issue of <em>MAD Magazine</em>, which might be the final one with new material, is out on stands now. You can find out more at <a href="https://www.madmagazine.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">madmagazine.com</a>. And you can find <em>The American Bystander</em> at <a href="https://www.americanbystander.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">americanbystander.org</a>, and McGregor at <a href="https://www.ianscottmcgregor.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">ianscottmcgregor.com</a>. The site to help save MAD is <a href="https://www.savemadmagazine.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">savemadmagazine.com</a>.

This week’s featured track is “Dance Through It,” a grooving and uplifting tune about perseverance from the band Twin Peaks. The video for this, which you can find on the Department of Tangents blog, is also a kind of horror movie, in that it features a woman who wakes up having been knifed in the back and stumbles bloody through public places in what looks like hidden camera footage. Yes, the visual metaphor is a bit heavy-handed, but the video is breezy and fun, despite that, and winds up being a perfect compliment to the song. She does, after all, dance through it. The new album is called <em>Lookout Low</em>, and will be available September 13. You can find them on the Web at <a href="https://twinpeaksdudes.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">https://twinpeaksdudes.com/</a>