(le) poisson rouge

Radio Happy Hour is a live variety show featuring an old-time radio comedy/drama and guest stars from the worlds of film, music, and letters. Hosted by Sam Osterhout, the show engages its guests in a wildly right-angled conversation that careens between interviews, stand-up comedy, musical performances, and trivia. At the center of it all is a short, old time radio comedy in which the guest stars as him or herself and is forced to help the Radio Happy Hour crew solve the crime. Audiences will see all of this--the interviews, the corny jokes, the guest performances, and the behind-the-scenes making of a radio drama--live every month, and podcasted online as well. Trust us, it will make more sense when you see it.

Drinking in the afternoon. Radio Drama. It’s like the depression, but funnier.

Past guests include Norah Jones, Andrew WK, Cursive, David Bazan, Tapes 'n Tapes, The Hold Steady, Jolie Holland, Jesse Eisenberg, Michael Showalter, Eugene Mirman, and many others.

You can download past episodes of Radio Happy for free at iTunes or at RadioHappyHour.com.

The music industry convention of calling a second album a “sophomore record” makes it sound like rock is some kind of college, which is weird. If Born Ruffians’ 2008 debut album Red Yellow & Blue was the result of a talented and precocious gang of freshmen, their 2010 follow-up, Say It, would be the project they left school to finish — a declaration that they’re smart and ambitious enough to make it on their own, and furthermore, that they’re in it for the long haul.

Where Red Yellow Blue began with a utopian dream, Say It opens with “Oh Man,” a jagged romp that finds singer/guitarist Luke Lalonde shaking his head at a romantic fool, and trying to steer him right. “You’ve got to go man,” he explains, riding smoothly over Mitch DeRosier’s galloping bassline and Steve Hamelin’s malleable but steady drum pattern, “and go take your place in this wonderful race.” A ragged echo slaps back at the guitar like wind in the band’s faces; they don’t flinch.

“We had two and a half weeks to work on Say It,” Lalonde says, “which wasn’t quite a luxurious amount of time, but it was more luxurious than we had during the sessions for Red, Yellow and Blue, when we had two weeks to record and mix it. Then, we were doing two songs a day.” Again teaming up with producer Rusty Santos, the Ruffians and co. holed up at Mississauga’s Metalworks studio and loosed the reins on their ambitions, experimenting with Minimoogs and saxophones before eventually scaling much of it back in the mixing process. Not that it was a wasted effort; DeRosier says, “I think it was important that we did that, adding things just to hear how they sounded.”

You can still hear the nuts and bolts of the songs, with guitar hanging out on its own (the jagged arpeggios in “Late”) or a bassline running away with that infectious crazy-quilt, “Retard Canard.” Which, incidentally, isn’t about the developmentally delayed. Lalonde: “Retard Canard is about a certain kind of person who feels like they don’t fit in, or can’t fit in and get along in life. That’s where the “not part of the human race” lyric comes from; it’s about how you just have to do it, or die trying.” And the residue of their production experiments can be traced in the swooning sax licks dangling over “Come Back” or the watery synths lurking in the tightly-wound “What To Say”: “When I get drunk I’m speaking more / get too drunk and I don’t speak at all / get too close to you and I don’t know / what to say.” Hamelin describes “What To Say” as “one of those songs where we put it together out of a bunch of different ideas, and it really came together as a cohesive whole. Unlike some of the songs we’ve put together out of a bunch of ideas, and they sound like a bunch of different ideas.” The parts hang together, a clattering machine bonded by a combination of kinetic energy and unshakeable confidence.

With Hamelin having reversed his earlier declaration that he no longer planned to tour with the band (“Steve was always going to be recording with us,” says Lalonde. “If we had to get another drummer to go on tour, we would have done it”) and ex-Caribou bassist Andy Lloyd joining them on tour to fill out Say It’s added complexities, Born Ruffians are ready to pull on their boots and get down to business. Let the sophomores stumble — these guys are showing up to work every day, paying the rent on time and sharing a secret laugh with the bartender. School’s out.

Bujalski, born in Boston in 1977, is the son of an artist-turned-businesswoman, Sheila Dubman, and a businessman, Edmund Bujalski. Andrew studied film at Harvard's Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, where the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman was his thesis advisor.

He shot his first feature, Funny Ha Ha, in 2002, and followed it with Mutual Appreciation in 2003 – though neither film received theatrical distribution until 2005 and 2006, respectively. Bujalski wrote both screenplays, and appears as an actor, playing a major role in both films. In 2006, he appeared as an actor and contributed to the screenplay of the Joe Swanberg film Hannah Takes the Stairs.

Beeswax, Bujalski's third independent film, was filmed in Austin, where the director lived while writing Funny Ha Ha, and released in the summer of 2009. While making Beeswax Bujalski wrote a screenplay adaptation of Benjamin Kunkel's 2005 novel Indecision for Paramount Pictures.

Hannibal Buress is a stand up comedian from Chicago. He current resides in New York City and he eats lots of Halal food from street carts. It's delicious. He's appeared on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen, and Comedy Central's Live at Gotham. He'll also be appearing in the upcoming documentary "The Awkward Kings of Comedy" He isn't really awkward though. Sometimes he is.

Ali Wong is a stand-up comic and writer.

Ted Alexandro is one of the rising comedians in the country and around the world, with appearances on David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, The View and two half-hour specials on Comedy Central.

Ted has performed on "The World Stands Up" in London, "The Big Night of Comedy Festival" in Amsterdam and thrice at Montreal's "Just for Laughs Comedy Festival". Time Out NY magazine named Ted one of the top comedians working today.

Uproar magazine had this to say: "With an appeal similar to Ray Romano and Jerry Seinfeld, Ted Alexandro may very well become New York's next big hit!"