Introduce yourself!

Which doesn't stop him from saying it.  I kid, baby!  Nice to see you here.  I hope you are doing well.

I am sloth.  I like Baby Ruth candy bars and Rocky Road ice cream.

I plan on enjoying my newfound freedom to post how I imagine people smell now that we are away from AVC.  It's the small things in life.  

Cub, you beautiful bastard

I like you just fine, Hipster D, as i see taciturnitude as a definite asset.

Recipe for the Archmage's Green Chili Lemongrass sriracha: take 56 green chillis, take off stem but leave crown. add a bulb of garlic, a tablespoon of salt (kosher is best), two or three tablespoons of sugar (brown or palm), one or two shoots of lemongrass, and if you like, some kaffir lime leaves and/or some szechuan peppers. Blend till like oatmeal. Stick it in a glass jar, with a spatula make sure its not on the sides of the jar, is level-ish; close the jar. With a laundry marker, mark the level on the side of the jar. Let this ferment for 1-2 weeks, stirring every day. Bubbles should form on the bottom; stir these out and tamp down to the level. If a white mould appears, scrape this off with a spoon. Do not panic. Do not panic. After fermentation, remove from jar, put into saucepan, add 1/4 cup vinegar (rice or white is suggested; i use homemade kombucha, i have also added t bit of lemon juice, but do so sparingly), gently bring to boil, then simmer it down a bit. Re-blend the hell out of it, 3 minutes at least. Strain it, wither with one of those cool italian tomato sauce hand-crank puree-ers, or with a simple sieve (and a non-treated rubber glove). The strained sauce, if you live can be simmererd again to thicken it; otherwise, it is good to go. The leftover pulp -be it from the puree crank, or the sieve- is amazing for stir-fries, fried rice, marinades, or (!) in The Archmage's Green Lemongrass Sriracha Bloody Caesars. Holy cow.

Typo or warning?

I am The Otter White Meat.

I had a first post once in an article about a nude Bea Arthur painting. That has been the apex of my posting career.

The Archmage of the Aether just look at my husband's green chili sriracha, fermented and blended and ready for consumption.  He very much likes your lemongrass idea, so next time for sure.  Mini honey bear says hai.

This is no exaggeration.  I envision you as a sort of telephonic James Lipton, but with less groveling sycophancy.  (Or do you edit out the groveling?)

I'm as sycophantic as the next guy if I feel like the situation demands it, but when it comes to Random Roles, for the most part I prefer to just let my interview subjects do the heavy lifting and only ask actual questions if I need to. My general method is literally just to give them the name of the character and the project it's from and let them riff on whatever comes to mind, be it how they got the part, who the character was, what the experience was like, what it meant to their career...whatever strikes them. I've always got some tidbit of trivia on hand to refresh their memory if it comes to that, but otherwise I try to stay out of it. Honestly, I find that just taking the time to look up anything other than their current project, their most popular project prior to their latest, and whatever's next on their plate is more than 95% of the journalists out there can be bothered to do. It's absurd that that's the case, but it really is true, and I think most actors would back me up on that, unfortunately.

As for the groveling, I don't really do much of that. I'd much rather pull some obscurity out of an actor's back catalog and have them go, "Holy shit, how do you even know about that?" That's the stuff that builds the bond between interviewer and subject, at least in my experience.

What makes the interviews so great is the finesse you use.  Really, a light hand is no use if you can't elicit an interesting response.

That's the thing - your interviews are *playful* - in the Random Roles, it sounds like the interviewees are *having fun*, and that level of comfort is just going to lead to interesting places.  

I just watched "Catching Fire" and Stanley Tucci's Max Quordlepleen-ish announcer typifies *bad* interviewing, which you see a lot of.  The interviewer tries to shape the interview into a narrative, with emotional peaks and troughs.  The "randomness" of Random Roles I think works more like a Rorschach test, where any overall arc is built by the interviewee themselves, not imposed by the interviewer.

NB:  man, I *hate* Charlie Rose.  How'd he ever get famous?

"Playful" is a good descriptor - as I try whenever possible to have each role be from a different decade, so that they never know what's coming next - with the occasional drift into teasing late into the proceedings if I've gotten the vibe that the person can handle it...and, thankfully, there's not been an occasion I can recall off the top of my head where I've read someone wrong on that front.

A recent example of teasing - and, appropriately enough, this is actually a tease of an upcoming piece (one which I mentioned on Facebook & Twitter, so those who follow me have probably already read about it) - came during my Random Roles with Martin Mull. We'd talked for just over 30 minutes, and I knew he had a table read to attend, so I said, "Do you have to run, or are you up for a few more of these?" He said, "Let's do it!" So I said, "In that case, I'd like to ask you about the experience of playing Hamlin Rule on Wonder Woman." He burst out laughing and said, "Oh, you are a son of a bitch!"

I just use one of them hand-blenders, but it gets pretty hot after five minutes. I bet a cuisinart would do a fine job. I avoid using higher-level magics in my cooking, as folks with Detect Magics up would either see the food as a potential Enchantment Trap, or would suspect i Enhance the product or its experience. Purist, i am.