WTF Live: the Just For Laughs edition

I can’t think of any better way to close out the Saturday night of the Just For Laughs festival than to witness a taping of WTF, Marc Maron’s wildly successful podcast, with guests Victor Varnado, Jeremy Hotz, Nina Conti, Mike Britt, and Mike Ward.

A selection of photos of Maron are below. So where are the photos of the guests? Well, despite being at the same venue at the same time of as the Nerdist podcast I shot in full two nights earlier, the JFL publicity team decided to switch up the rules at the last minute, and only allow 15 minutes of shooting from the back. How whimsical!

Here’s how I managed to inadvertantly turn this into an even bigger fail. Before the audience was let in, Marc was asking around for a pen. I gave him my only one, assuming I’d get it back shortly. But I soon found myself at my shooting spot at the sound board, 50 feet away from my trusty Michael Scott Office ballpoint from Target. But it mattered so little, I even tweeted about it:

@sharilynj good thing I’m shooting @wtfpod taping, because @marcmaron has my only pen. #journalismfail #jfl #justforlaughs

Ha ha, good thing I won’t need to take notes in order to cover this properly, because I’ll be shootin’! Yup, shootin’ the whole show, no need to take notes, just… wait, what’s that? I’m not now? The only way for me to show people what happened would be to take notes with my notebook and… pen?

Great.

All I could do was stare at it sitting there horizontally across the front of the table, hearing Bruce McCulloch’s voice whining “my pennnn” in my head for the next hour.

Meanwhile, a few audience members were clicking away for the duration, so evidence of the following highlights may be found elsewhere:

-Marc’s Jeremy Hotz impression
-Marc talking to Nina’s monkey puppet as though it was real, while Jeremy and Victor looked on in disbelief
-Why comedians in France suck

There was so much energy in that room, both from the audience and the comics, and it was over much too soon. The turnaround for this episode should be similar to other live episodes, so expect to see it pop up on iTunes within a few weeks.

And if I may make one suggestion? It’s often tempting to stop listening to a live WTF when it gets closer to the end, if the guest is someone I’m either not familiar with or don’t love (hey, I’m busy, and we all have a backlog of This American Life to listen to). Most of you won’t be familiar with Mike Ward – I wasn’t – but trust me when I say he’s worth sticking around for.

Marc greeted everyone as they left and handed out stickers. I waited until the audience filtered out enough so nobody would see me go up on stage and take my pen back, lest they think I’m some stalker stealing his DNA for my shrine. The fact that I think this way? No wonder I’m a WTF fan.

Enjoy the photos. That’s my pen sitting between the two water bottles.

Sharilyn Johnson

Sharilyn Johnson is a writer and communications professional. She's been an entertainment reporter since 1995, and began focusing on comedy in 1998. Before relocating to Toronto in 2008, she served as the comedy reporter for Winnipeg's alt weekly, Uptown Magazine, for five years and hosted the weekly radio program Laugh Tracks on CJUM for three seasons. Her comedy coverage has also appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, and on CBC Radio's national comedy show LOL.

More Posts - Twitter