A Baker's Dozen of My Favorite A.V. Club Pieces

I’ve written for many publications thus far in my career, but I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited about becoming a regular contributor than I was when I started writing for the A.V. Club. For people who didn’t know about the site, I used to explain that it was “the non-parody sister site to The Onion,” clarifying that it was devoted to the coverage of pop culture in all shapes and forms. When I first discovered its existence, I was, like, “Holy shit, this is the site I’ve been waiting for all my life! This could be my site!” And for awhile, that’s exactly what it became. I started writing for the A.V. Club in 2011, and I became so prolific in my contributions for those first few years that, even though they were in Chicago and I was in Virginia, I really felt like I was a part of the A.V. Club family.

Over the years, however, that tight-knit feeling started to fall away.

Don’t get me wrong: I can say without hesitation that I liked virtually all of the editors I worked with over the years and was unfailingly happy to see them in person on the rare occasions that our paths actually crossed. (I only made one trip to Chicago, so the rest took place when I was attending the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles.) But as the A.V. Club changed hands and the freelance budget began to dwindle, the opportunities for me to contribute to the site began to shrink, which meant that the interactions with the editors became less frequent. And I’ll admit that I’ve bumped heads on occasions due to running late with deadlines or - more often - turning in pieces that were longer than the word count they’d designated for a particular piece. But I kept pitching. And for way longer than I should’ve, I kept thinking that maybe there was a chance that things would change, that the freelance budget might increase again, and - least realistically of all - that there might be a shot of getting a remote staff position.

Well, as of today, I’m confident that that last one damned sure isn’t going to happen, because the corporate overlords of the A.V. Club put the last nail in the coffin of the site as I’d known it by putting seven of its staffers in a position where they had to either move from Chicago to Los Angeles - with no cost-of-living increase, mind you - or take a severance package. They did the latter, and I don’t think anyone blames them for doing so, but it just sucks beyond belief that it came down to that.

With that move, they basically disbanded the A.V. Club.

Oh, I’m sure the site will continue. Hell, it may still end up bringing in just as many readers in the long run. But it’s never going to be the same again. As such, this seemed like as good a time as any for me to reflect on my time with the site and to offer up a list of my favorite pieces that I’ve done over the years…and, no, it’s not just Random Roles interviews, smart-ass.

1. INVENTORY - “Who are three people who have never been in my kitchen?”: 16 TV-character crossovers with real game shows

How could I not include my very first piece for the site? I’d wanted to write for the A.V. Club for years, and I’d been Facebook friends with Noel Murray for about a year and traded enough comments with him on our respective pages before I felt comfortable enough about asking him if he could maybe help me get my foot in the door. (It also didn’t hurt that my full-time gig with Bullz-Eye had just come to a close.) Noel introduced me to Keith Phipps, I pitched my Inventory idea, and because Keith didn’t know me, he asked if I’d be willing to collaborate on a piece with Noel as my first contribution to the A.V. Club. Of course I was willing, and upon turning in my entries, Keith paid me the highest compliment I could’ve imagined, which was to say that he couldn’t always tell who’d written which entry. The rest, as they say, is history.

Other Inventory pieces I have loved:

• Ferris Bueller’s further days off: 14-plus short-lived film-to-TV adaptations

• Meddling Kids + Sidekick + Mysteries = Series: 13 Hanna-Barbera productions that recycled the Scooby-Doo format

• Arthur Fonzarelli, time traveler: 22 animated extensions of live-action TV series

2. RANDOM ROLES — Peter Gallagher

I’m sure you knew I was going to include this one, since it’s well documented as my first Random Roles interview for the site, but even if it hadn’t been, I still would’ve included it. When I told Peter that it was my first time doing one of these interviews for the AVC, he said, “Well, we’d better hit it out of the park, then, hadn’t we?” And 90+ minutes later, he’d helped me do just that, setting the bar ridiculously high for my future RR interviews straight out of the gate.

3. INTERVIEW — Sid & Marty Krofft

I’m not someone who loves having to do phoners with more than one person at a time, just because it’s such a pain in the ass having to figure out who’s talking at which point. In the case of these two guys, however, they sound distinctly different, which made it a great deal of fun to capture their back-and-forth sibling squabbling. I still remember getting an email from Keith, telling me that he’d actually laughed out loud while editing the piece, which provided me with a glow that I can still feel even now.

4. INTERVIEW — Mel Brooks

Aside from the mere fact that it’s a straight-up bucket list moment to have interviewed this comedy legend, I also remember it fondly because he was promoting an HBO special he’d done with Dick Cavett, and I spontaneously decided to reach out to Cavett and ask him what question he thought I should ask Mel Brooks. I won’t spoil the question - you’ll have to read the piece to find out what it was - but I’ll tell you that Mel lowered his voice and said, “Oh, that’s good.”

5. THE SINGLE FILE — Kirsty MacColl, “My Affair”

I remember it took some work to figure out how to write about Kirsty MacColl for the A.V. Club. I think I wanted to do more of an overall look back at her career, but I was ultimately steered toward doing a Single File piece, albeit with the understanding that I could figure out a way to approach her career through the lens of one track. “My Affair” may not have been my favorite Kirsty song, but I’d always liked it, and after writing this piece, it’ll forever be in competition for being the one that means the most to me.

6. INTERVIEW — Stephen Root

If I’d had the chance, I would’ve done absolutely nothing but Random Roles interviews for the A.V. Club, but once in awhile I’d get the opportunity to talk to someone who’d already done one and yet still had enough left to discuss that the powers that be considered them worth another conversation, albeit one that was a straightforward Q&A. This one will always hold a special place for me because it contains the greatest question I’ve ever asked anyone:

“From a scientific standpoint, do you believe it is feasible for a macho business donkey wrestler to actually own a super karate monkey death car?”

You’re welcome.

7. RANDOM ROLES - Alex Rocco

When this interview went live, I sent the link to Alex and told him that if he ever decided to write a memoir, he should let me know. He wrote back and thanked me for the piece and said that I really knew my stuff. About a year later, he wrote me again and wanted to talk about that memoir idea. In the end, it never came to pass, but the talks went on long enough for me to visit him and his wife at their home and led to a dozen or so phone calls. He was a hell of a guy. I just wish he hadn’t thought I was too much of a Southern gentleman to write about his days as a hanger-on with Whitey Bulger and the Winter Hill Gang. But at least I’ve got the stories.

8. RANDOM ROLES — Kelly Lynch

I mean, come on, for the Bill Murray story alone, am I right?

9. TV CLUB — The Middle, “Stormy Moon”

I’ve reviewed a number of different shows for TV Club over the years, including Hung, Alcatraz, The Goldbergs, Magic City, and Trial & Error, but none of them have meant as much to me as The Middle. The biggest reason, of course, is that there’s been no other TV series that’s hit so many familiar familial notes for me as The Middle. That said, there’s also no other TV series that’s offered up a storyline that was literally drawn from my actual life, which I discussed in this review. A few years later, the show would thank me for all of my reviews and my devotion to the series by naming a character after me - “this guy named Will Harris” helped Axl get the job that led him to leave in the series finale - but as far as I was concerned, they’d already given me plenty to be thankful for.

10. Surely You Can’t Be Serious: An Oral History of Airplane!

About a year after this piece went live, I got an email from David Zucker saying, “I might have some freelance work for you. Give me a call.” I did. It turned out that he, his brother Jerry, and their cohort Jim Abrahams had been thinking about putting together a book, and they wanted to see if maybe I might be the guy to help them do it. As of this writing, I think I still am, but they’re working on their part of it at the moment. That said, the conversations I’ve been able to experience as a result of having done this piece have been amazing, and I stand by my position that the section of this oral history called “Welcome to the Machine” is arguably the funniest thing I’ve ever committed to print.

11. RANDOM ROLES — Norman Lloyd

There aren’t a lot of pieces in my back catalog that I can look back upon and say, “I contributed to pop culture history,” but when you do an interview with a man who worked with Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Robin Williams, Judd Apatow, and Don Adams, I think it qualifies.

12. SET LIST — John Lydon

There are a number of different Set List interviews that I did for the A.V. Club over the years that I could’ve included as a token item, but when it comes down to it, I’m probably most proud that I was able to do an interview with the artist formerly known as Johnny Rotten wherein he stayed in good humor throughout. It hasn’t always been the case, as I’m sure most people know, but he seemed pleased with the fact that I wasn’t asking him the same old boring questions, which in turned pleased me a great deal as well.

13. RANDOM ROLES — David Warner

I mean, obviously.