Dave Sim on Seth and Brown

With about a half-hour to the interview segment it looked as if it might be touch-and-go as to whether they could fill even half the 40 or so seats set out in rows. Seth and his lovely bride Tania arrived and, with Seth occupied with all the last-minute details—including one last “I only smoke in Torontoâ€? cigarette—I had a chance to talk with Tania (who I had never met) and within minutes the room was packed (I mean standing-room only plus) with the room temperature starting to soar.
The one-hour interview segment was a lot of fun as Seth grilled Chester on any number of subjects that you could see Chet would really like to have had a few minutes to mull over before answering, many of which verged on the boundary of “too personalâ€? and others of which left Chet flummoxed as to whether to disagree with the “liberal-centricâ€? premise of the question or to answer it as if he agreed with the premise and which were, consequently, the show’s highlights, all us voyeurs in the audience eating it with a spoon. At one point, answering a question about his Libertarian political views Chet said, “All of my friends are liberalsâ€? and I momentarily considered yelling “HEY!â€? really loud from the back of the room for comedic effect (being, I was pretty sure, the only other person in the room besides Chet whose politics were to the right of Pierre Trudeau’s) but thought better of it (yelling tends to frighten liberals terribly at the best of times and therefore has limited comedic applications in their native habitats) and Chet apologized the next day when I pointed out the omission. It was pretty formal and genteel but there were a few moments where Seth and Chet seemed to forget the audience was there and it was just like being back at Sushi on Bloor where it was usually Joe Matt asking the most provocative questions—in that case, just to get a rise out of someone.