No one thinks of deserts in Pennsylvania, but we have one habitat that includes many plants typical of the western deserts. The “shale barrens” have formed over millions of years as the eroding crests of the Appalachian ridges open up areas where rock slides or exposed shale deposits create an area of very little soil that gets hot in the sun and that holds no water.
Plants such as the red cedar, barrens stonecrop, hen-and-chicks, or even prickly pear cactus thrive in these microdeserts, mostly on south-facing hillsides. These resemble more closely communities in west Texas than the eastern deciduous forest around them. Yet, unlike the West, there may be ferns alongside the cactuses, taking advantage of the rain.
How do cactuses survive our winter? Because they can tolerate being dried out, they dump their water when it gets cold and collapse like deflated balloons. With little water in them, they do not develop ice crystals internally, and so do not freeze! At Powdermill Nature Reserve, we maintain a small dry garden to show these unusual species to visitors.
John Wenzel is the Director at Powdermill Nature Reserve, Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s environmental research center. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.
Of all the bands I've been in, I've never really sat down and thought a lot about what I wanted out of it. So I was like, 'OK, I want to make music that's really fun and that I want to listen to over and over again.'
Kate Berlant's experimental comedy is the best thing since oh God I'm melting | John Wenzel
Kate Berlant popped onto my radar when Denver comedy troupe The Grawlix flew her in for their monthly showcase, but it wasn’t until I saw her at last year’s inaugural High Plains Comedy Festival that I understood why The New York Times, Playboy, L.A. Magazine and others have been freaking out over her.
Berlant’s comedy is singular in the best and most confounding possible way. Watching her largely improvised sets is like watching a delusional, hilariously pretentious theater instructor wax poetic after dropping acid, but also a bit like listening to a business jargon-spouting New Age guru.
In other words, calling her inscrutable persona “weird” is like saying Andy Kaufman was KIND OF into toying with the conventions of comedy. And while it’s easy to see her a natural extension of Kaufman’s theatrical meta-humor, Berlant is increasingly being embraced by non-festival, non-comedy-nerd crowds, which hints at the broadening definition of stand-up as much as its audience.
In honor of her return to Denver’s Oriental Theater on Friday, Jan. 31 for Sexpot Comedy’s Ice Queens of Comedy show — which she’ll co-headline with L.A. dynamo Beth Stelling, with opening sets from Denver’s Jordan Doll and Troy Walker — I caught up with the 26-year-old L.A. native to talk stand-up acceptance, truth in fiction, surreal experiences, and why her comedy isn’t actually that weird at all.
I’ve never seen anything quite like your stand-up, which comedy fans seem to warm up to pretty quickly, but which could be a harder sell for your stereotypical audience at a strip-mall club. Are you ever worried people won’t get it?
Fundamentally, no. Sure, I get nervous before every show and it always feels like, “Oh wow, I want to connect. How am I going to connect?” But just from doing it more and more, it becomes more possible too. You know? It still feels mystical. Stand-up is insane. Sometimes when you do it a lot you forget that and disassociate from how crazy it is, how inherently artificial it is, and how inherently scary it is, even though it doesn’t so much feel that way to me anymore.
Have you ever noticed yourself adjusting your material to fit a certain crowd or venue?
I actually realized very recently that I don’t. I went on tour opening for Father John Misty, doing like 25 cities, and I afterward I realized that I really don’t adjust my material at all depending on where I am. Which I think is classically considered impossible for a professional stand-up. A pro would adjust their material. But I feel really lucky because two years ago I had some shows Wilmington, N.C. and I remember being really nervous, like “Oh GOD!” But it went so well.
Was that your epiphany moment that this is the right path for you?
I actually had this moment a few years ago, maybe in 2009, where I felt like, “Oh fuck, I’m going to have to just go into performance art. I’m going to have to apply for grants and I’m going to go about it through that world.” But I always identified as a stand-up and felt like a comedian. And I feel lucky because I’ve never been forced to feel like what I was doing didn’t belong in comedy. So there was a brief moment where I had a panic. I wasn’t performing as much after that because I had this anxiety that I couldn’t do what I wanted. So yeah, it was powerful for me to then feel like, “Oh, this IS comedy.” Not that people don’t think it is, but I realized I can do this in more traditional zones.
What was your style like when you started?
I did stand-up for the first time when I was 17, and since then I’ve been obsessed with it. But I was performing once a week, so not all the time. So maybe a safe number is to say I’ve been doing it for four years intensely. I started with this really hyper-constructed act where every word was planned. Lots of one-liners. I was still very methodical. The jokes were still strange or starting to play with abstraction a little bit.
Did you ever record your sets and watch them?
Yes, but I was very appalled. I still physically cannot bring myself to watch myself. I really can’t do it. I think in some ways it hurts me, but other times I don’t think so. Even if magically someone was filming a night where I thought I had a great time, I could look back and watch it and think it’s the most depressing thing. It loses all of its magic. I hate watching myself, but watching footage of myself at 18 doing stand-up once a week, it’s like watching this full-blown Eugene Mirman impression. It was exactly his intonation, because when I got into stand-up I was really obsessed with [Mirman’s former NYC showcase] Invite Them Up. I memorized every word of the album.
Have you ever gotten an openly hostile response from an audience?
I did Zanies in Nashville and that was a time when I looked out into the audience and just saw like 45-year-old men with their faces mangled with gin blossoms looking at me kind of confused.
A lot of people, including me, have described your comedy as experimental. Do you ever take issue with that?
It’s more of a thing of not wanting to talk about it, like not wanting to see how the sausage is made. It’s potentially beside the point. I love critical language and I love talking about ideas and about what things do, but it’s always really embarrassing or grotesque somehow to describe what you do. It’s always hard, and because illegibility is exciting to me, or confusion, it makes it even harder.
Do you think audiences are friendlier to your act now than they would have been during the comedy boom of the 1980s, for example?
[Long pause] Sorry, I’m just picturing myself doing comedy in the 1980s. [Laughs] I think so. And I think it’s the internet. That’s the thing I think my comedy’s about, which could be skewered because of the type of statement that is, but it is. The way information becomes moved and people attach themselves to certain ideas and then discard them indiscriminately, like it doesn’t even matter. Although you can feel this momentary conviction. Just the aesthetic of conversation online and trying on different personas and failing to really communicate but wanting to. I think in that way it may be more friendly because maybe people are more familiar with what my stuff feels like.
Do you feel connected to any particular tradition in stand-up? I’ve seen you compared to Andy Kaufman, even though that’s a sort of reductive and easy thing to throw out there.
I feel totally connected. In no way do I feel outside of tradition. I guess the Kaufman thing is fair because my comedy is “weird.” But the word “weird” is so… I don’t know. Just the way we scoff at people who are like, “Yeah, it’s weird. Things are WEIRD.” I think if you’re doing anything that even just slightly resists or feels a little different than the usual then [Kaufman] is automatically brought up. I LOVE Andy Kaufman and would be flattered to be put in any proximity to him. But in terms of what I do, it’s just comedy.
How improvisational is your set? I’ve heard you never do the same set twice, Reggie Watts-style, but I imagine you’ve got some favorite phrases and bits.
It’s really night to night. For example, the other night I did like 20 minutes and I really just didn’t want to say anything I’d said before, and it felt good. It felt scary in a certain way to just completely go with that. The goal is always to abandon the plan. You know where things become exciting when you do that. But being on uneven landscape and having to react to it, it’s hard. It’s scary to do that. The night before I did the 20-mintue show, I had this nightmare that I was doing an hour or something, and I just completely bombed. I just couldn’t do anything. It was a classic anxiety dream. So the next night I said some of the things I said on stage on in the dream where I was bombing, where I was facing this wall of people and no one was making a sound and I was reacting to them.
That’s pretty surreal, to take a dream about bombing and make the material in that dream into a real set.
Exactly. I was like, “Oh, I GET IT.” I’m really trying to train myself to just really do what Reggie does, what Rory (Scovel) does—that kind of spontaneous aesthetic, that invented narrative that’s so exciting to watch. That’s why stand-up is live, why it doesn’t just feel like watching television. I love that and I love those nights. Of course I have language, I have my ideas of what I’m thinking about and my mood. With improvising, it’s so much about your mood and how you feel. And obviously, even if you’re not improvising and it’s completely scripted it’s still totally your body up there. But like I said, it’s really night to night. I absolutely repeat things. I have my favorite things. That’s how I write: onstage. I have a highly fragmented notebook, like little highlighted words that trigger little things for me.
The persona is so flawless and inscrutable. Do people ever approach you thinking that’s who you really are?
What I get a lot is, “You’re CRAZY,” or “You’re on acid,” or “Are you high?" Sometimes maybe people don’t know how to talk to me? But that’s not always true. I feel, all the time, so lucky and encouraged by people who react and like what I do. But yeah, I guuss there might be a confusion about where I am or who I am in it. It’s strange to think about because I don’t know how to reconcile where between nature and artifice I am.
I thought Jason Zinoman’s New York Times piece on you really captured that, and it's hard for me to think about your act lately without referencing that article. And then there’s that famous Oscar Wilde quote about man being least himself when he talks in his own person, but give him a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.
Yeah, I really liked that article. It’s weird: in comedy, for anyone who cares about what they’re doing, there’s this thing of trying to pretend it’s all natural, like you don’t think about it. And in some ways I really DON’T want to think about it. It’s like with critical writing: you don’t want to pull a performance from theory, you want to just do it.
Jargon is the enemy of journalism, and yet it’s sort of your stock in trade, however knowingly. Do you ever bone up on corporate and marketing speak or training manuals or whatever else to refresh that well that you draw from?
No, but I’ve been feeling lately that I really need to read again. Anything. PLEASE read again. I feel truly illiterate and kind of depleted lately, whereas a couple years ago I was reading so much and writing in that language, that sort of impenetrable sensual text that suggests meanings but really doesn’t. You’re like, “Wait, WHAT?” And I loved that and it really fed me, but I haven’t gone back to it. So sometimes I’ll read for like 20 minutes. It’s like art stuff. I like video artists, like Ryan Trecartin. His work really speaks to me.
I can’t let you go without talking about Denver, because this will be the third time the guys from the Grawlix and High Plains crew have flown you out in a little over a year.
Oh my God, Denver has been the most welcoming place. I’ve just met so many truly thoughtful people. It’s so exciting and it feels so good to be accepted by people there. I did The Grawlix at the Bug Theatre (in August 2012) and that was the first time I’d been to Denver. They brought me out for that and then I did the Fine Gentleman’s Club show… what’s that called?
Too Much Fun, their weekly show at the Deer Pile space.
Exactly, and that show was really fun. That was over a year ago, right? I truly have no understanding of time, which has suddenly become a problem. I’m completely unable to map the occurences of my life in any chronology.
This sounds like something you need to explore on stage…
We here at Chicken Scratch have had a gangbusters 2014 so far. Steve Heisler took over as co-anchor on Weekend Update, Julie Seabaugh has been writing articles for the Illuminati, Matthew Love earned his Ph.D. in Advanced Loveology, and John Wenzel lives in Colorado.
To say it’s been a whirlwind is an insult to all whirlwinds out there that pale in comparison to OUR whirlwind, and the last thing we want is yet another angry letter from the Congressional Whirlwind Lobby. Needless to say, this is our first post of the year.
But why look backwards? For the first time in Chicken Scratch’s vaunted history, we have joined forces to bring you a glimpse of the future—what comedy might look like in the year 2014 if we had our druthers and comedy kept it saucy:
STEVE HEISLER
1) Less outcry demanding comedians apologize for things.
Kudos to the awesome Natasha Leggero for having the courage to stand her ground and refuse to apologize for a joke she made on New Year’s Eve. It’s certainly nothing new to find a comic who is unwavering and unabashed with his or her opinions, but surprisingly 2013 became the year everyone and their mother proclaimed themselves the Comedy Police. Whether it was outrage over The Onion’s Oscar’s tweet, Daniel Tosh’s rape “joke” or Joan Rivers doin’ her thing, the op-ed Internet echo chamber couldn’t wait to jump in with their opinion of why so-and-so was a horrible person.
Now, I’m not here to say that people don’t have a right to feel however they feel when they listen to a comedian. I mean, you’re obviously not a psychopath. You will have feelings. Feelings are nice to feel. But I don’t like the implication that a public apology is a mandate. It deemphasizes the entirety of what a comedian has to say and places a line or two completely out of the context inherent with the bit, the evening, the mood—pretty much every single facet of how most people heard the joke. This is also not carte blanche to make lazy jokes at the expense of others.
The Daniel Tosh issue is problematic not because he spoke about rape or was heckled (the two sides as best as I can tell), but because he did not put much thought into his response. He was failing at doing what stand-ups are best at: using humor as a gateway into discussing loaded topics. Our culture forgives a lot if it’s funny, and even though humor has a monstrously high degree of variance, we still can’t shake our human nature to empathize with things that make us laugh. Just look at the sheer number of posts that went up after the Tosh thing that were called some variation of, “X number of rape jokes that are actually funny.” As if the problem was CONSENSUS.
I’m ready to stop talking about the topic itself, and more about the role of a comedian and the fact that jokes come from a perspective that has value even if you don’t agree with it. Natasha Leggero’s letter started the year off on the right foot.
2) That’s all I got for now.
JULIE SEABAUGH
The increasing number of annual comedy festivals Exploding? Certainly. Worth attending? For the most part, definitely. And with performers like Tenacious D on down the ladder heading up events of their own, the vibes tend to be less corporate cash cow-y, more community spirit-ed.
Kyle Kinane’s next album/special Word on the street is dude’s about to record a new release (his third, following 2010’s Death of the Party and 2012’s Whiskey Icarus). If his headlining set earlier this month at the Riot L.A. Festival was any indication, it’ll be another monster (and may or may not be a supernatural one-man show titled Ghost Roommate. [Signs point to "not."])
Tig Notaro may have been beaten out by Kathy Griffin for last night’s Best Comedy Album, but her Grammy nomination proved not only can a raw, groundbreaking stand-up release receive acclaim outside of comedy circles, but the divide between “alternative” and “mainstream” continues to diminish. So that. I look forward to more of that.
MATTHEW LOVE
The next step in podcasts
Like a mic or a Twitter account, podcasts are a basic template through which a comic’s energies flow. When podcasting was in its infancy, the idea of putting earbuds in to hear a two-hour conversation with a favorite stand-up or showbiz personality was a novelty; we’d never heard Zach Galifianakis or Chris Rock in such a revealing and intimate space, and for so long. The ability to download and savor these conversations, all but whispered into our ears, seemed unbelievable—not to mention free!
Somewhere along the way, nearly every comic reaching for the brass ring (that had become seemingly much harder to reach) or seeking a promotional tool got a podcast. From there, the same 40 or 50 people moved between podcasts in different combinations on different weeks. Some of these shows have had a gimmick to keep them afloat, others are just funny people talking. At this point, new podcasters have probably figured out that just building it does not mean that listeners will come. On the receiving end, it’s fair to say that a performer just sitting down and talking to their friends will not always produce a quality talk show.
2013 may have been the year the market hit its saturation point; 2014, I hope, will be the year those who gave up on a podcast last year will find the next level to their output. Full-fledged radio shows, like Welcome to Night Vale or Come to Papa, show what a nice conceit, a well-wrought script and great performances can do. Kurt Braunohler’s The K Ohle has multiple formats, and while they don’t all succeed, the restlessness and creativity of the show keeps listeners on their toes. There are ears ready to hear something new, always. And persistence and originality will out. So get to it.
Fans, support your champion
There are a lot of New Yorkers, or former New Yorkers, getting their due on cable at the moment. Comedy Central alone saw Nick Kroll and Amy Schumer take off last year; if the excellence of the first two episodes of Broad City are any indication, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer will see their stars rise this year. Which leaves New York comedy poster child Chris Gethard. Comedy Central is producing the pilot for his erstwhile cable access show to be filmed at the end of this month.
Best case scenario: The Chris Gethard Show goes off like gangbusters, with all of its heart and strangeness in tact. Worst case scenario: it doesn’t. Either way, Gethard’s fans, and the community he has spent years building, will be behind him. Though it may be occasionally embarrassing to him (as seemed apparent when he talked to Chicken Scratch contributor Elise Czajkowski), Gethard’s sensitivity, his generosity of spirit and his genuine vulnerability make him an inspiration. He is someone who takes care of those in need, so in turn, there are lots of people in the comedy community (or just fringe characters at-large) who want to make sure he is taken care of. Hell, even networks feel this way about him—IFC made up the “Adopt-a-Comic” program for him.
If all goes well, Gethard’s particular brand of earnest freakiness brings him greater acclaim on a national level; imagine, a scary and awkward public access show gathering freaks from around the nation under one umbrella! Right now, the network has Gethard’s back… but as Gethard can tell you, TV is a fickle bitch. With eyes on the prize, the Gethard-loving community should agree that, even if the show doesn’t work out on Comedy Central, it would be in their best interest to follow IFC’s example and help him do what he does best. To anyone who has ever thought about him as a confidante or a counselor, a rabble-rousing proxy or a sympathetic champion of the underdog: keep the man in the back of your head and get ready to throw some cash at him… just in case.
Miscellaneous other projects to look forward to:
- Poking a Dead Frog, the new interview book from Mike Sacks. Not just because the Scratch's Steve Heisler contributed to it (although that is nice)… the first one was such fun, and really hit me in that comedy-writing nerd spot. Ah, yeah, hit me again.
- Search Party. Is it possible that so many wonderful, slightly underappreciated comedic personalities (T.J. Miller, Jason Mantzoukas, Thomas Middleditch…) could come together in a movie with a good chance at being great?!
- Tooken: Tina Fey’s new series starring Ellie Kemper as a young woman who's escaped from a cult. Kool Aid drunk.
JOHN WENZEL
1) Comedy festivals a'plenty
I saw more live comedy in 2013 than in the previous few years combined, and what I learned from those experience was that it's STILL not enough. Fortunately, small stand-up events seem to be popping up everywhere -- which is good for both live comedy fans and budding comedians. From Denver's inaugural High Plains Comedy Festival to Omaha's Crom Comedy Fest (see pages 26-27 of this SXSWorld piece for more), there were tons of approachable, regional events designed to offer a buffet-style approach to stand-up. But the more established ones, like Montreal's industry behemoth Just for Laughs or Portland's indie-oriented Bridgetown, were also predictably great. And that's not even mentioning comedy at big music fests (SXSW, Coachella), the return of Austin's Moontower Fest, New York, L.A. and Chicago's city-focused fests, and the two or three-day mini-fests in Aspen, Atlanta, San Diego, Grand Rapids, Michigan and elsewhere. Pretty much every month this year is going to have a comedy fest worth visiting.
2) New shows/reasons to live
On the digital side, Comedy Central Studios is readying a series from Kurt Braunohler called Roustabout that may finally make him a (sorta) household name, and I was thrilled to see that Fox's Adult Swim-ish animation block ADHD just bought a pilot from Colorado-bred stand-up Amber Tozer. I'm also waiting with bated breath to see what the next half-dozen scripts from The Grawlix comedy troupe will amount to, since their top-rated Amazon Studios pilot Those Who Can't was passed over for initial pick-up. And of course the pilots/premieres of The Chris Gethard Show, Adult Swim's new Tim and Eric vehicle Bedtime Stories, and the 8-episode stand-up showcase The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail. Plus 8,000 others that have yet to be announced but will doubtlessly make me wish I had cable or satellite instead of just Netflix.
3) Catching up with old stuff and things
I feel like I raced through the fourth season of everyone's favorite resurrected savior, Arrested Development, so I owe it to my obsession with the first three seasons to bow down to that motherfucker. I have yet to go back and re-watch my favorite (or missed) episodes of Louie, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Modern Comedian, and other stand-up-centric fare. Then there's Comedy Central's (currently) high-batting average lineup of Inside Amy Schumer, Kroll Show, and Key & Peele that I really should revisit to satisfy my broadcast-TV sketch cravings. And online, how could I forget the L.A. group Women? And anything Rory Scovel-related? And a billion pretty good Funny or Die vids? Jesus, I've got a lot of work to do.
4) More Netflix/Amazon Studios/Jash-type experiments
As I learned while researching a piece about digital comedy channels, the field is set to explode with more new series this year than ever. Competition will inevitably prune away some of the sweet stuff and leave some died-on-the-vine crap, but the overall freedom and weirdness comics are afforded on these online shows is a boon for creativity. I'm looking at you, Above Average, CC:Studios, Yahoo! Screen and a bunch of others. Or I should say I WILL be looking at you, once I can find four seconds to get my shit together and not be distracted by all my shit that's not quite together yet. Bring it, 2014!
A sold-out crowd greeted Reggie Watts' headlining performance on the final night Denver's inaugural High Plains Comedy Festival. Photo by Evan Semon, heyreverb.com.
As our Steve Heisler pointed out yesterday, nobody can consume every comedy album, TV special, Funny or Die sketch, sitcom pilot, and humor book released in a single year.
Nor should they. That would be gross. That, and discernment is fundamental to critical opinion, and when you're getting paid to broadcast it to whatever audience your advertisers are going after, it becomes a meaningless exercise to thumbs-up everything that falls into your warm, velvety lap.
I'm as guilty as anyone else in being more inclined to listen to something on Comedy Central Records (especially if it's someone I already like) than I am Joe Sixpack's Startup Vanity Outlet, which incidentally didn't put out any great comedy albums this year.
But my favorite comedy of 2013 is, like most of ours, cobbled together from things that were marketed to me as well as things I discovered on my own and through friends. Some of the best was through the digital word-of-mouth channels of Facebook and Twitter, where certain people (whose comedic opinions I highly respect) have become reliable fonts of comedy awesomeness. Some was shit I saw on the bus. Literally.
So at the risk of devolving into a rant about the inherent problems of Best-Of lists (because hey! we need another one of those!) or talking in depth about the human feces I saw on the bus, I'll just shut up and list my favorite comedy of 2013.
Albums/specials
1. Kumail Nanjiani, Beta Male
2. Maria Bamford, Ask Me About My New God!
3. (tie) Adam Cayton-Holland, I Don't Know If I Happy and Andrew Orvedahl, Hit the Dick Lights
4. Craig Ferguson, I'm Here to Help
5. Louis C.K., Oh My God
6. Pete Holmes, Nice Try, The Devil
7. Kurt Branohler, How Do I Land?
8. Chris Hardwick, Mandroid
9. Amy Schumer, Mostly Sex Stuff
10. Bill Cosby, Far From Finished
Festival comedy
Joan Rivers, Tig Notaro, John Mulaney, Moshe Kasher, Todd Barry, Aparna Nancherla, Jon Steinberg, Michael Che, Judah Friedlander (Just for Laughs festival, Montreal)
Kate Berlant, Matt Braunger, Kyle Kinane, Andy Peters, The Grawlix, Chris Charpentier, Aaron Urist and others (High Plains Comedy Festival, Denver, Colorado)
Videos
Brent Weinbach's painfully hilarious Gangster Party Line (thanks for the heads up, Ron Funches). "Fuck you and your bone spurs!"
Anything clip having to do with "Publizity" from The Kroll Show
More than half of all Key and Peele sketches (or a surprisingly large percentage for the normally hit-and-miss quality of a network sketch comedy)
