Even I was surprised
There’s an easy way to enjoy the Q&A segment of an onstage interview. Leave before it starts. I’d love to tell you which is the worst I’ve ever been to but it’s such a grisly pantheon that my mind shuts down in the simple act of recall.
I saw an interview with Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners last year. Kevin was so compelling an onstage figure that just the act of watching him listen, in rapt silence, to his own remastered record, was a joy. In the Q&A, not one man jack in the audience didn’t want to ask a question, and by ask a question, I mean compliment the great man with a tortuous personal anecdote. Trapped in a corner, there was no option but to wait for a curfew that never seemed to come.
How many among us can say that we represent the development of many themes?
I certainly feel I contain multitudes. I could probably stand to contain less of them.
amon gus
If someone was cheering him, would they say “Amon, Rah!”?
Lions fan?
Debra’s eye is beginning to twitch. Is a spell about to hit the audience?
Observations like this are why I come to the comments section.
If I were prime minister I would make it mandatory for all Q&A sessions to have ejector seats that are triggered by the occupant saying “This is not so much a question, but…”
Like Graham Norton’s red chair? Sign me up as a co-sponsor.
You guys actually have something called “elfin safety” or some such, do you not? How does the red chair get past that?
More generally, the ejector could be triggered whenever the question starts with ANY sort of explanation of the format of the question. “This is a two-part question, the first part of which is really more of an observation.” – SPROING!!!
Or, even simpler: just have it trigger whenever it takes the asker more than ten seconds to state the question.
I love today’s official strip commentary.
The most memorable Q&A session I ever saw televised was one with Keith Richards, in which Keith was absolutely too annihilated by drink or drugs or both to actually answer questions, or for that matter, form words.
But he was happy! Babbling like a one-year-old.
As a result it was quite short, like “several seconds and then they cut to a commercial” short, and as a consequence actually rather enjoyable!
Such are the perils of taking questions from a room full of extreme enthusiasts all eager to show how smart they are.
Try chairing a panel when one of the members thereof is as bad as any audience member.
I did once get to summarise a panelist’s five-minute answer as “No”.
(I was also once picked on by a speaker who wanted questions when the audience had turned oddly shy. Tricky, as he was an actor whose work I didn’t really know. I’m proud to say that I managed to improvise a question he liked.)
tbf, maybe English is not that Luxembourger’s first language.
Possibly, but I’m not sure that is enough to excuse ANYONE for using the phrase “the energies of the present day”.
Debra knows how to deal with these difficult questions. 🦆
Dunno. The Q&A part could be a great time where you can actually hear some part of the story that isn’t usually told. But I have to admit, hearing some questions causes physical pain. The one about how a woman can reconcile career with family can kill the best conferences.
Question; did Tony Blair and New Labor try and co-opt the 90s witch revival the way they did with Britpop?
Also was did this movement cross the Atlantic? I remember Wicca was big over here in the 90s as well as the Neve Campbell and Fairuzia Balk movie, The Craft.
Yes and probably not. Next question!
On the plus side, this does seem to be driving the Devil away from Maggie. Well, maybe more like anesthetizing him, which works well enough for the time being.
Too numb for sin.
MACDUFF
What three things does drink especially provoke?
Porter
Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and
urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes
away the performance: therefore, much drink
may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him; it sets
him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him,
and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him
in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
You know the guy asking the question in panel 2 is sketchy by the third name on his t-shirt.
And so many other things.
BTW love the interviewer’s outfit and hairstyle.
Maggie and Billie are giving me Amy and Shelley vibes. I love it.
Yes, they do. Which one would be Amy, though? They always strike me as both being Shelley-like, in entirely different ways.
They take turns being each other’s Amy and/or Shelley
Stripey orange microphone bearer has my sympathy. You know that as they work their way up and down the aisles and along the rows they are silently cursing the crazy question people, even before they get to them. Or maybe not – the beatific expression in panel 1 suggests that they are in a pleasurably alternate plane of existence. Hurray!
Reading the front page and wondering if it’s pure coincidence that the first sentence that appears immediately after today’s commentary reads “It has been a few years since I have ‘appeared’ at a convention in the UK.”
The answers were short at least. There should be a rule which says the longer the question the shorter the answer and visa versa.
“Mine is more a comment than a question…” is the best one. (Literally) hours of (not literally) fun.
“…specifically this is the Ted X talk I gave last month…”
“Out of respect for the (Japanese) author, I will present my (obscure and long-winded) question ALSO IN JAPANESE.” True story from an international literary conference in Finland.
The person, whose question thus took twice as long to ask, certainly had no respect for the professional interpreter sitting next to the author on the stage, who could quite perfectly have interpreted simultaneously while the obscure and long-winded question was being asked, and even less respect for the next author, the last one on the panel, whose contribution was in consequence cut short for lack of time.
Well done. This anecdote made me shudder.
“This is more of an observation than a question – in fact it’s not a question at all – in fact it’s less an observation than an open-ended series of unconnected thoughts wrapped in a thin veneer of criticism – I’ve never asked a question in my life.” – Danny Lavery @ The Toast (RIP) https://web.archive.org/web/20171119030443/https://the-toast.net/2015/05/01/every-question-in-every-qa-session-ever/
Many years ago I went to a presentation by the late, great Ursula K. Le Gunn. For the Q&A portion they passed out index cards for people to put their questions on and Ursula got to pick her favorites to answer. It was a great way of handling the problem referenced by the comic. I stayed through the whole thing and enjoyed all of it.
Is this a tortuous personal anecdote to compliment someone???
The best part of this is that it automatically excludes any question that won’t fit on an index card.
Lucky you. Le Guin was one of my personal goddesses.
But if she’d been thinking, she would have required that all questions be asked in the Old Speech.
That sounds dangerous.
Risky. Who knows what eldritch horror you might accidentally summon with a misspoken word!
Lucky. I’ve been a fan of hers since the 70’s, and lived right across the river from her since the 80’s and never managed to go see her speak. Something I regret terribly.