Kevin Scanlon

Two of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here.

When Kumail Nanjiani was 18, he came halfway around the world from Karachi, Pakistan, to one of the whitest places on Earth, Grinnell College in Iowa. Appropriately, at 34, he's now a comedian specializing in wry jokes and fish-out-of-water observations, which have landed him both a Late Show With David Letterman appearance and a recently filmed Comedy Central special.

His wife, Emily V. Gordon, also works in the comedy industry, but that's about where their similarities end, at least on paper. Hailing from Scarborough, N.C., the 33-year-old Gordon previously was employed as a therapist at a Chicago institution for schizophrenics. Now program director of West Hollywood's Nerdist Theater, Gordon is charged with wrangling events at the venue, which happens to be in the rear of a Sunset Boulevard comics store.

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Crackheads have the best diaries. Well, if you can read their handwriting, that is. Stevie Mack is a comic who's lived to tell about it in his popular one-man show about addiction and recovery, Diary of a Crackhead, which performs on Monday, May 14 at Lab at the Improv.

Here's our Q&A with Mack:

What was your childhood like?

My childhood was very different from most kids. My mother had six kids by six men, and my daddy was the only one who didn't stick around. We moved a lot, practically every six months. I went to 11 schools, six juvenile halls and three probation camps. I stole everything I wanted, and in my family that was not frowned upon. Didn't make many friends growing up, only met potential victims of my kleptomania. Lots of strange and curious characters frequented our residence, getting high, committing crimes and violent acts, so drugs and alcohol for me was a natural progression in this environment.

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Photo by Ted Soqui

The crowd at the Best Fish Taco in Ensenada, getting ready to laugh.

It's just after 10 p.m. and already five comedians have done their thing when comic Eddie Pepitone strides up to start his set. Short, bald and decidedly unhinged, Pepitone gives the air of a blue-collar Buddha: a wizened, workaday sage who happens to be slightly crazy-eyed.

Getting right to the point, he starts his trademark screaming.

"Let's address the elephant in the room," he shrieks. "We are out-fucking-side a fish taco place -- things are not going well for ANYONE!"

Pepitone is in the outdoor faux-cabana of the venerable Los Feliz taco hut Best Fish Taco in Ensenada -- a spot that looks like a cross between a Corona Light commercial and Keanu Reeves' man cave. Normally you'd come here to eat fish and/or shrimp tacos, and gulp down any number of canned sodas. And yet, for the 11th time on alternating Tuesdays (the first and third of every month), the hip, the punk and the snarky are crowded here under stage lights, listening to some comedy.

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Laurent Martin

Comedian and Author Moshe Kasher

To say Moshe Kasher had a tumultuous upbringing would be an understatement at best. The 32-year-old comedian and author now appears regularly on E!'s Chelsea Lately and his clean-cut look -- slicked-back hair with thick black glasses -- appears to dispel the notion of any momentous regrets. But Kasher in the Rye, his compelling memoir of a rough-and-tumble childhood with two deaf parents and a festering substance-abuse problem, isn't exactly easy to stomach.

Written in Kasher's distinctly witty and often frantic narrative voice, the book takes you on a journey through his stints in rehab, jail and therapy as a teenager. It's not so much a redemption story as it is a comical reflection on a past life, one that Kasher left behind after getting sober at 16. "When I was about to turn 30, I had a realization that I had this full measure of life between that insane period and where I'm at now," he explained recently in an interview at the vegan restaurant Flore in Silver Lake.

Kasher's parents split up when he was 9 and his mother whisked him and his older brother away to Oakland, where they lived mostly on disability assistance and food stamps. In the book, he tells of his parents' romantic first encounter, at the World Games for the Deaf in 1967, but his father, a painter before rededicating himself to Hassidic Judaism, often flew into uncontrollable fits of rage, once breaking his mother's fingers. "Seems like my dad might've been born angry too," he writes in the first chapter.

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Natalie Toren

Anyone who attended this year's Daniel Franzese film retrospective at L.A.'s Silent Movie Theater can attest that this actor's career spans a vivid spectrum: From the bloody crimsons of Bully (the 2001 Larry Clark version, not the new documentary), through the pastel pinks of Mean Girls, to the shadowy hues of I Spit On Your Grave. Now Franzese adds a new color to his palette: neon orange, the same pigment that radiates off the skin of Snooki and The Situation.

Last week, Jersey Shoresical: A Frickin' Rock Opera, starring and co-written by Franzese, began its Los Angeles run at the Hayworth. LA Weekly took the opportunity to pick Daniel's brain on this hilarious musical satire, NY Fringe Fest, and never playing the same character twice.

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Jack and Jill

If the Academy Awards are a back-slapping bore, the Razzies are a bitch-slapping fun fest. Traditionally held on the eve of the Oscars, the annual awards show for the first time took place Sunday night on April Fools' Day at Magicopolis in Santa Monica, the perfect opportunity to lay into the movies that were last year's biggest jokes.

And who did the Razzies' 657 members vote as the big "winner" of 2011? Adam Sandler, a whopping 22-time nominee, whose fiasco Jack and Jill -- in which he plays both brother and sister -- swept all 10 categories, a Razzie record. Hard to believe a film with Katie Holmes, David Spade in drag and racist jokes about Mexicans and Indians didn't make critics laugh.

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Southwest Airlines may agree with the "fat" part of Kevin Smith's new book Tough Sh*t: Life Advice From a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good from Gotham Books, but Silent Bob is far from lazy. He's an author, comic book store owner, professional stage farceur and podcaster who runs a network of podcasts for other big mouths called SModcast (check out our cover story on him last year, "Kevin Smith: "I Am So, Like, Sick of Movies and Shit"). And in case a couple of flops like Mallrats, Jersey Girl and Cop Out didn't ruin him for you, he's also a filmmaker whose first movie, Clerks, inspired many a budding early-'90s director to wrack up a mountain of film school debt.

In his memoir, Smith recounts his career highs (Clerks, Dogma, working with George Carlin) and lows (Bennifer, Bruce Willis). He also opens up about his wife, their 12-year-old daughter, rediscovering weed and being booted off a flight by a major airline. We caught up with the director -- who has a book signing at Barnes & Noble at the Grove tonight at 7 p.m. -- to talk about some of his life lessons, from the teachings of John Hughes to knowing how to keep your career and dream alive even after you've called it quits.

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Did you ever think he was sexy?

Back in November, Jazz Ponce, longtime booker of Hollywood Studio Bar & Grill's Monday-night comedy staple What's Up, Tiger Lily?, began branching out beyond mere stand-up for an interactive, bonding, Mystery Science Theater 3000-style endeavor called For Shame!. Thus far the likes of T.J. Miller, Chelsea Peretti, Kumail Nanjiani, Moshe Kasher, Greg Proops, Pete Holmes and permanent host Brooks Wheelan have taken part in the monthly show, which is, according to its publicity, "where funny people relive their most embarrassing musical choices from their youth. Watch as they share secret stories about bands they sadly were obsessed with. Then the audience will relive the horror by watching a music video from that artist as the other comedians comment on it as it plays."

Last night at the Improv Lab, Hampton Yount admitted to rebelling against his parents and breaking up with an early girlfriend because of Linkin Park's "In the End," while Aparna Nancherla recalled seeing the flashes of cinematic brilliance in Backstreet Boys' "The Call" when she taped MTV every morning from 2-5 a.m. in college.

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Courtesy of Comedy Central

In Ugly Americans, which began debuting new episodes last week on Comedy Central, wizards, demons, zombies, humans and more live together, and often clash, in New York City. At the center is Social Services trying to ease the rifts between the varied members of the community.

Callie Maggotbone works in Social Services. She also dates the show's central character, human Mark Lilly. Voiced by comedian Natasha Leggero, Callie is a half-demon/half-human succubus.

"You don't play the succubus part," says Leggero over a recent phone call. "She's a woman and she's in love with Mark. It's very much how I've been in relationships, minus being Rosemary's Baby."

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Nerdist

Nerd Emperor Hardwick announces the lineup

Nerd.

What was once a word used to assert adolescent alpha male dominance over the guy who would eventually become your boss is now a nearly complete empire run by the once-oppressed. Unlike the Habsburg, Incan or Qing, this one has its own channel on YouTube, complete with Weird Al, Neil Patrick Harris and, well, cute shit exploding, among other nerdly things. Oh, and there...will...be...puppets. Henson puppets.

We caught up with Chris Hardwick, high emperor of the multifaceted project Nerdist, and his business consigliere Peter Levin to talk about the channel, plus bowling, nerd-cred, and why getting whacked in the face with a toy lightsaber can ultimately be a good thing for a lot of people.

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