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Comedy Culture

My 5N interview with the sober guy behind Drunk Glenn Sumi

The Fringe Festival’s 31st edition just wrapped up, and though it was a success, one thing was missing. My inebriated alter ego, @DrunkGlennSumi, didn’t get to weigh in on any of the 151 shows.

In previous years, the Twitter parody account – run by a mystery person who seemed to be having way more fun than yours truly – would ask Fringe artists to tweet out the title of their show in return the artist would receive a 5N Tweet-review, albeit with lots of typos.

For the past few Fringes, rumours abounded that DGS would reveal him- or herself at the Fringe Club. People were convinced they knew who it was. Some even suspected it might have been me.

Then, midway through the festival, Aaron Hagey-MacKay, an actor, writer and story editor at parody show The Beaverton, revealed the secret he’d kept for nearly seven years.

“This seems as good a time as any to officially come out as @drunkglennsumi and retire the character,” he stated in a tweet. “Thank you for being a NNNNNs sport, @glennsumi. It’s been dormant for so long I’m having reauthentication issues, but tbh, it’s over… #RIPdrunkglennsumi

So I thought I’d interview my Bizarro World self.

Aaron Hagey-Mackay

Me: I’m curious what made you finally come out. Was it the fact that the account was dormant?

Aaron Hagey-Mackay: I feel like my hand was forced because I couldn’t log into the account. I remembered the password for Twitter but I stupidly set up a Hotmail account, because of the inactivity on that Hotmail account it was shut down and I couldn’t get back into that. In order to reinitiate the password through Twitter, it sent a link to the old email on Hotmail and I couldn’t get into that. At this point I don’t think anyone can. There’s been some talk about passing the account off to another writer, but you’d have to start from scratch with a new account. Maybe Drunk Glenn Sumi, Jr?

Why start it in the first place? 

Back in 2012, my sketch troupe, Jape, had a show in the Fringe called Jape Presents: The Grapes Of Khan. We got a 3N review. I was playing dominoes in Christie Pits with Jamie O’Connor and Cameron Wyllie, from the sketch troupe Bitches Leave – which is a Robocop reference, not some misogynistic slur. They asked, “How’s the show doing?” And I said, “Yeah, we got 3Ns, and we’re okay with that.” Then someone said, “If only Glenn Sumi had been drunk, he would have loved it.” I think Jamie was the first to say, “Oh yeah, drunk Glenn Sumi would just go around rating things.” Critics seem to hold so much power in the success of a Fringe show. And our feeling was: What if there was a guy who just gave 5Ns to everything because he was just so happy over his intoxication?

Have I ever met you, or reviewed you?

Never. I’ve only read your stuff. And someone else reviewed the Jape show. At the time, we thought a drunken character who was just so happy drunk all the time might be a fun Twitter account. Several months later, I was drunk, and on a whim I started the account. I thought I’d set it up and think about how to do it and wait for July and the Fringe. But it gained traction. People were wondering: “What is this?” And then the three of us got together and realized we needed strict guidelines for this character. We didn’t want to cyber bully you, and it was edging on that territory. All three of us were doing it at first, but after a while it just sort of ended up being me. It must’ve felt really weird to know that there was someone impersonating you online. We didn’t want to sound anything like you, because that would’ve just been mean.

What’s funny is how many rumours there were about who was behind this account, and how long it was kept secret.

There weren’t a lot of people coming up to me asking if it was me. I heard people had thought it was Megan Fraser, or Alice Moran.

I had a feeling it was somebody in the comedy world, maybe with some theatre training. The tweets were very clever, but there were theatre references in there as well, punning on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and misquoting Shakespeare. Do you have a background in theatre?

Like I said, at the time I was in a Fringe show, and that wasn’t my first Fringe show. During college I was in a show called Monkey Love. But yeah, like a lot of people in the comedy world, I wanted to be an actor. I had an agent for a time. In high school I was in a few plays. I loved going to the theatre, would be a part of it occasionally. I had a working understanding of theatre. But I wasn’t so deep into it that it was my life. Comedy was more my thing.

You used the same Twitter avatar that I did – borrowed from an Adrian Tomine graphic novel. I had to change it so there wouldn’t be any confusion.

Yeah, I think I photoshopped the words “Soooo drunk” over it. I hope you weren’t so attached to that pic. You can have it back now. 

Thanks. There was only one time that the account worried me. I was in New York City seeing some theatre, and you tagged The Public Theater in a tweet saying something about how were vomiting on their stairs. Of course, they knew nothing about me or this account.

I apologize if I caused you any stress. That was wrong.

Looking through DGS’s timeline, it’s almost like a weird reflection of the times, seen through the bottom of a glass or two of alcohol. There’s Rob Ford, the end of the Obama administration, climate change… not much about Doug Ford of course –

– I know, because I was so inactive in the last year.

Is that what you had planned for the account? There are also references to artists passing away. There’s a sincere and shocked reaction to the deaths of Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Yeah, I think if you go through most people’s Twitter timelines, it’s going to look a lot like that in a weird way. Things happen, people talk about them and you comment on them. 

The account really sprang to life during the Fringe Festival, when you gave 5Ns to shows if they tweeted out their titles to you. That must’ve been fun to do.

I think the account’s real utility was its support of the community in giving a signal boost to artists. So many artists start Twitter accounts for their shows, and they’ll have 27 followers, all friends and family. And in a few weeks those accounts will just be finished. So if people have a show and want a review? Sure. I obviously couldn’t provide a sincere review, so I just looked at the name. They were like book reports by a really bad student: “Ohhhh…. Wuthering Heights, what can I say about this book? From the “heights” of this book, looking down, boy is it ever “wuthering.”

In the way you’re satirizing the whole the whole star (or in our case N) rating system in entertainment, and how absurd and often arbitrary it is. Was that also one of your points – that people often pay more attention to a rating than to actual criticism?

Yeah, I think it evolved into a critique of the ratings system. As you point out online every year around this time, a review is just one person’s opinion. And it just so happens that you guys use Ns instead of stars. And that happens to dovetail nicely into any word with an N in it. You can put five of them anywhere and it works. So yeah, I think the account did look at the arbitrariness of the ratings system. What if some really happy drunk went around and gave you 5Ns? Isn’t that worth something, too? Isn’t that as valid as a rating by someone who has spent many years absorbing theatre? Maybe it’s the same. Obviously it’s not!

Was there a key to drunkenly mistyping things? Did you actually look for letters that were close to the ones on whatever keyboard you’d be using?

Style guide-wise: every N in a sentence is capitalized. There is always one spelling mistake, and everything either ends with 1N, if it’s a bad thing, or 5Ns if it’s a good thing. That was pretty much the key.

When I looked back at the timeline, it seems like your account was retweeting a lot of Toronto comics, especially when they involved alcohol. Like if they were out for drinks and had a photo, it would get a simple retweet.

Yes, or a retweet and a 5N rating as the comment. That was just kind of like a pro-alcohol stance, like attempting to keep the party going on Twitter. Part of it was just having fun with people within the community. Probably my favourite thing was when Ann Pornel had this ongoing Sketchersons sketch called “wash yo ass.” For a while Drunk Glenn Sumi told Ann Pornel to wash her ass.

What’s your own relationship with alcohol?

After my dad died a few years ago, I quit drinking. So @DrunkGlennSumi was being run by a guy who was completely sober. There’s some irony in that. I realized alcohol was something I was leaning on emotionally, and it wasn’t healthy. And honestly, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. A lot of comedians, if they’re not addicted to a substance, they’re at least addicted to the laughter. There’s a reason why many comedians have died from substance abuse. It’s because they’re kind of broken people.

Congratulations. Obviously you’re putting your satire and your writing talents to good use right now. Tell me what you’re doing.

I’ve just launched The Gigawut, a YouTube channel. I’m hoping to build it up. I’ve noticed that a lot of environmental messaging is really dour. You don’t want to engage with it because it makes you feel hopeless. And I think that’s the last thing we need. When people feel that way they disengage, and the end of the world becomes this inevitability. I think you can see that reflected in our pop culture, with all these apocalyptic fantasies and these dystopian movies. We have to get out of that mindset. And that’s what I’m hoping my skills as a satirist can do.

I’m launching first video on Monday on the very easy topic of junk mail. I’m hoping to build a community around it. Come for the humour, stay for the community – that’s kind of my idea. And I can look back at the younger generation when I’m old and everything is gone of shit, and say, “Well, I tried.”

What kind of approach are you taking?

I’m approaching it as somebody who tells you what’s going on, but also adding jokes. I’m inspired by John Oliver, or Carlos Maza’s Strikethrough on Vox. SciShow and the Crash Course series on YouTube is another source of inspiration. They pepper in facts and humour in a way to try to get people interested and engaged. You’ll learn stuff along the way and also share some laughs. I think when you’re laughing you’re engaged with it.

There was talk about some people taking this account over. What advice would you give them if they if they do manage to do it?

Tell me who you hired to hack into the e-mail server. Your skills are wasted on a parody account and you should probably be working for CSIS or McAfee.

@glennsumi

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