Six degrees: A great big post about people we love

Hey, everyone, looks like it’s “clean out my inbox” day again, and I’ve got a lot of updates and tips to pass along to you all.

On a more personal note, I’m currently digging out from underneath a cartoonishly large workload, which was itself just buried under a new mountain of tasks today, so I’m really not sure when I’ll have time to do another one of these posts. I say this to encourage you to leave any additional tips and/or links in the comments to this post, as I suspect a baby born today might reach the legal drinking age before I have free time to do another Six Degrees entry. That said, I’m taking the time to do this one, so read onward!

The Daily Show correspondents

• If you TiVo the shows and skip the commercials, you might have missed this: The Daily Show is going to be live on Tuesday for Inauguration Day, with the correspondents weighing in from Washington, DC. This is one of the few times that DC looks like the cool place to be, so stay tuned. [Now I'm *really* peeved that I'll have to work that day ... but no way I'm doing it from DC! My office is two blocks from the White House, and I refuse to wade into that insanity if I won't even get the chance to see the party. Any of you TDS people who tire of the crowds are welcome to join me at my place, where I'll be grumbling about my job on that otherwise festive day.]

More from Eric Drysdale, J.J. Sedelmaier, Pete Grosz, Laura Krafft, John Oliver, Amy Sedaris, Demetri Martin and Ben Karlin after the fold!

Eric Drysdale

• Our dearly (and doubly) departed “Bobby” has a couple of upcoming gigs at the very cool Ochi’s Lounge (inside of Comix) in New York. You can catch him this Friday at seven in “Third Fridays”. Don’t miss him!
• I said don’t miss him, but if you didn’t listen, you can try to redeem yourself by going to “Stand Up, Lie Down” on February 6th (also at Ochi’s Lounge). And keep your eye on his blog for other impending gigs.

J.J. Sedelmaier

• We’re big fans of J.J.’s, as anyone who’s checked out our interview with him knows. Given that, we were happy to see this article show up in Animation Magazine: “Sedelmaier Behind NY Animation Exhibit“. You can check out “It All Started Here” (“a historical and creative retrospective of New York’s animation industry”) starting later this month; get to it, folks.

Peter Grosz

• Pete will be appearing with fellow Colbert Report alum Laura Krafft at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater later this month. We blogged about these gigs in our last Six Degrees post, but I didn’t realize then that Mr. Grosz would be joining Ms. Krafft in “Three Piece”. Sounds like a good night to head to UCBT, people.
• You can read more from Pete in this interesting and hilarious interview at Zulkey.com. Pete shares a number of interesting factoids (how to practice writing for the show, a piece on Stephen wanting to be a fashion critic, etc.), but this part answered a question I’d had for a while now: “And for anyone who doubts that was really me at the show, it really was. My wife and I went to see Rickles in the fall of ’06 in Vegas and it happened to be when they were shooting his concerts for the HBO special. A shot with me in the audience made it into the final cut of the special and so we used that on the show.”

John Oliver

• Speaking of funny interviews, here’s a beauty from John Oliver and SuicideGirls. I particularly loved this exchange, on the relative merits of “arse” vs. “ass”:
  

  Each has it’s own merits. I think the classic English ‘arse’ is better used for describing disappointing human behavior, and the new-fangled American ‘ass’ is infinitely superior when used in reference to a particularly striking adult posterior. Here’s how you would use them in a sentence:

  “Check out the ‘ass’ on Ryan Seacrest …what a shame it is attached to such an ‘arse’.”

  I hope that clears that little confusion up, and brings our two nations closer together.

  Okay, including this interview, I think I’ve never seen anything featuring John Oliver that I didn’t like (I haven’t watched The Love Guru). Were I to get the opportunity, I doubt I’d manage to carry out such an entertaining interview, myself, but wouldn’t I just love the chance to try!

Amy Sedaris

• Amy’s popped up on iChat, in addition to narrating PBS’s Make ‘Em Laugh (of which the first episode is now on the internets). Have a look-see.
• Did you miss Amy on Craig Ferguson earlier this month? If you did, do yourself a favor and go watch it here. You’ll be happy that you did.

Demetri Martin

• Demetri’s long-delayed show finally premieres next month, and I, for one, can hardly wait. Important Things with Demetri Martin premieres on February 11th, and you can read one little teaser from the Star-Ledger here. Me, I know that any guy whose random musings include things like “I think they named oranges before they named carrots” is a guy whose show I’m ready to watch. He’ll tempt you with guest spots by the likes of David Cross and John Oliver, but that’s just (admittedly sweet) icing on an already hilarious cake.

Ben Karlin

• The good people over at BoingBoing made a slight error in Ben’s title on this one, but we’re willing to overlook it, ’cause we like both them and Ben. (We love our former interviewees here at NFZ!) Here’s The Sound Of Young America‘s Jesse Thorn interviewing Ben, courtesy of BoingBoing.

Thanks to MagicHour, Jennie, JennywithaY and DB for helping me collect these links!