Kayvon and Nardwuar: media mentors for Generation ADHD

“AUX delivers popular guerrilla reporters Kayvon and Nardwuar for winter programming launch,” read today’s press release via GlassBOX Television, touted as the Canadian media company of the future, with an all-star broadcasting industry board of directors to match. But, when what they have to deliver are middle-aged men who irritate the famous with rambling questions a la Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, what does that say about the state of celebrity interviewing? The late Brian Linehan channeled his dream to go from Hamilton to Hollywood by perfecting his ridiculously over-researched interrogation style, but there was always the sense that he knew something you didn’t. Nardwuar the Human Serviette, who changed his name from John Ruskin in 1986 and found his place on Vancouver campus radio station CITR, spouts off a similar depth of historical insight beneath the schtick — which led to years of appearances on MuchMusic, and a weekly hour now exported to seminal New Jersey station WFMU. But his early days of crashing press conferences and ambushing publicists meant playing up a noxiously hyperactive persona he will never be able to shake.

Meanwhile, the lesser-known Toronto-based Kayvon Zahedi is cut from a similar cloth, even if his initial medium was online video, and his choice of stars to chase far less discerning: the premiere episode of the AUX version of KayvonTV shows him being condescended to by Perez Hilton, of all people, who has better things to do than accommodate a show business bottom-feeder. There is one flash of Borat-worthy revelation in AUX’s KayvonTV premiere: a rapper from Naughty By Nature, offended by the implication that he’s been out of the game for years, snaps back at Zahedi by suggesting he was too busy “making falafels.” AUX promoting both these guys as integral to their talent pool is a quick way to distinguish it from the CTV style of VJ typified by Ben Mulroney, while also providing encouragement to members of a generation raised on Ritalin — you too can grow up to annoy the stars.