Modified On October 14, 2008
FOS Sharilyn Johnson took the blog plunge last month. Her blog, From The Back Of The Room, is explained in her first post. Here are the money grafs:
As a lifelong supporter of comedy, it’s been my personal mandate to present comedy as a serious artform. As a journalist I covered comedy for print (remember print??), and for three years hosted my own radio show about comedy. After this, I turned to performing on a semi-regular basis, and confirmed what I already knew: this shit is hard.
Comedians themselves are typically reluctant to wax poetic on the merits of what they do, and often dismiss their profession as being a convenient alternative to a “real” job. The truth is, punching up a script is tougher work than punching a timeclock. And comedy serves an invaluable function in society, which is too often taken for granted.
Whether covering standup, writing, film, clown, improv… this blog will, first and foremost, treat comedy as something to be respected.
Sharilyn has been a longtime reader of SHECKYmagazine.com and we finally met her at JFL a few years back. Her love of all things comedy is unquestioned. And, though she be a journo, she’s actually sucked it up and gone up onstage and experienced those hot lights. This gives her a certain credibility and it informs her writing.
Check out her blog on a regular basis. Her current front page includes a wistful memoir on the Winnipeg comedy scene, a wrapup of the New Yorker Comedy Festival and a thorough tongue-bath of Stephen Colbert. (She is, perhaps, the biggest and least apologetic Colbert freak on the planet.)