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Oh, hello! That is not just an informal journalistic greeting; for millions of Hannah Hart fans (known collectively as Hartosexuals), that is the catchphrase Hannah uses to kick off every episode of her beloved ‘My Drunk Kitchen’ web series. My catchphrase, “Hit me with the big fish!”, has yet to catch on. Some say it’s too terrifying when I yell it, others say it lacks contextual purpose in most conversations, but what do they know, right? Don’t let other people drag you down.

Be your own person.

Anyways, while doing some research before this interview, I had the immense pleasure of going through and watching her ‘MDK’ series. Yes, the show is hilarious, but there was something else about the series that kept me fascinated. As soon as an episode ended, I wanted to see another. It wasn’t just for the incredible wordplay she incorporates into every episode (tequila mockingbird, anyone?), or the entertaining progression of intoxication that inevitably has her closing every episode in a drunken stupor. Meeting her in person, I discovered what it was.

Character.

As ambiguous as that word can be, it is the perfect word for Hannah Hart. She is charming, funny, personable, and considerate. Her positivity is infectious, and I couldn’t recommend her series enough for it. Character is the perfect word for her, but it barely does her web series justice.

In between filming an episode in our kitchen and entertaining her fans, she was nice enough to stand with me in a smelly alley behind our bar in the hot hot heat and answer a few of my questions.

Gunnar Ohberg: First of all, what inspired you to create the first ‘My Drunk Kitchen’?

Hannah Hart: Well the First ‘My Drunk Kitchen’ was actually made for a friend of mine. I was a translator living in New York, I was working as a proofreader for a translation firm, and I made ‘My Drunk Kitchen’ literally just as a joke for a friend. Entertainment was not a career that I saw for myself. But then suddenly I had accidentally made this show that people loved. And so I kept doing it.

GO: And you are loved obviously, as we can tell from the line out front of our building. So it’s safe to say you’re an internet celebrity now. How has that changed your daily life, positive or negative?

HH: I think it’s only had a really positive impact on my life. I have an awesome community that allows me and encourages me to do more and bigger things. It’s great to meet fans that I see in public, because I just want to give them a hug and be like ‘Hey, thanks for fulfilling my dreams!’

GO: Well, has learning all these recipes over time made you feel Hannah ‘Smarto’?

HH: Ooooooh, zing zing! I can tell you that it’s made me feel Hannah ‘Farto’.

GO: (laughing) Back at me.

HH: Yep!

GO: How do you come up with the recipe ideas?

HH: First I get drunk, and then I get hungry. And then usually it’s about what’s nearby. And then I make it. And then I eat it.

GO: Any idea what food, drinks or people you’re going to be working with next?

HH: I just shot with John Green, that was great! I think Neil Gaiman and I might shoot a ‘Kitchen’ together at some point, he’s been talking with me. I definitely want to one day go to Japan and shoot a ‘My Drunk Kitchen: Sushi’. I feel like that would be phenomenal.

GO: Neil Gaiman is gonna be…

HH: Yeah, I met him the other day and he was like, “Yeah, ‘My Drunk Kitchen’, blah blah blah…”

GO: I would love to know what solemn, surreal food he’s gonna come up with. I’m a huge Neil Gaiman fan.

HH: Oh, he’s a great guy. Awesome guy.

GO: Have you ever thought about making a series of rants and calling it ‘My Drunk Bitchin’?

HH: I have thought about getting a series of rashes and calling it ‘My Drunk Itchin’. Zing zing!

GO: What is your favorite beer?

HH: Don’t like beer.

GO: All right, what’s your favorite wine?

HH: I love a petite sirah.

GO: You’re known for coming up with amazing puns on the fly in your segments. What is your favorite Mel Brooks movie?

HH: I guess it’s ‘History of the World Part 1′. Yea, definitely.

Be sure to check out her series, ‘My Drunk Kitchen‘, on YouTube, and follow her on Twitter @Harto.

Battle & Brew was visited by Hannah Hart today. Hannah and the Harto crew are very nice people-it was a pleasure to host them in the bar while she filmed an episode of My Drunk Kitchen. If you would like to know what Hannah cooked up, you’ll have to subscribe to her channel to find out!

But how did B&B manage to get this e-celebrity to visit? Well, it all started with my love of the show, Hello Harto, and Indiegogo. I, Bunny, love My Drunk Kitchen. I stumbled upon an episode when it was just starting and loving it, I subscribed to the channel and looked forward to new episodes. Hannah announced she wanted to take her show on tour, and in order to do so held an Indiegogo campaign. There were many different perks you could get for donating to the cause- one being to put a “pin” on the map to show where Hannah should go (more pins in one area=more likely she would visit there). I pitched in what I could to do my part to get Hannah to come to Atlanta.

The Indiegogo was a huge success! There were many other MDK fans in the Atlanta area who also donated, so Atlanta was chosen as one of the stops. In order to film MDK on the road, Hannah would need kitchens to film in. If you donated to the Hello Harto Indiegogo you got the opportunity to pitch your kitchen to Hannah. So I got out my camera and got permission to pitch Battle & Brews’ Kitchen. I pitched my love for the show, the uniqueness of the bar and the fact that it was filled with beer and cheese. I posted the video online and sent in the “Pitchin’ Kitchin’” application.

Later I received an email from the shows Producer, Pearl, stating that B&B had been chosen as a finalist for the show! Pearl & I set up a time for a phone interview for later that week. Pearl asked some questions about the bar, and felt it was a good choice- and with Hannah’s approval Battle & Brew was chosen as the Atlanta MDK location! I received a filming date and time, and it was decided to close the bar for the day so Hannah could have full access to the kitchen.

Hannah and the Harto team were all very nice. They were polite, friendly and fun. The crew got to play some games and try some great beers and Hannah got some wonderful cocktails from our Beverage Manager, Nate. Everyone had a good time and good conversations were had. Battle & Brew and I would like to thank Hannah Hart and the Harto crew for choosing us as their MDK location.

Part of the joy of working at a place like Battle n Brew is our unique customer base.  Sometimes when I go to sports bars (yes, that does happen from time to time) I’ll start talking to some of the other patrons at the bar, especially if I decide to go ahead and get that third double well whiskey.  They are often fun and very friendly, but their lives are usually about as exciting as a jar of mayonnaise.  Which I guess is really exciting if you’re a big fan of mayonnaise (or even weirder, a big fan of jars), but I’m more of a ketchup/mustard kind of guy myself.  And Adam Toews was my perfect blend of condiments.

Haha, this opening is silly.

Anyways, Adam Toews does not lead a mundane life.  He is the lead illustrator of the hit FX series ‘Archer’, which just concluded its fourth series to critical praise.  I was lucky enough to sit down with him for a minute and soak in all the awesome.

Gunnar Ohberg: What got you into animating in the first place?

Adam Toews: When I was 13 or 14, I would get to drawing in sketchbooks with friends, going out somewhere, drawing people that were there, our favorite shows… I remember thinking when you hit middle-school and people start telling you, “Hey, start thinking about your future, now’s the time,” I was like, “Well I really like drawing, so can I do that.”  [My] teacher was like, “Oh yea, sure, go ahead, go do that.”  So once I got the ok that [drawing] was the thing that I could do, it was the path that worked for me.  And it felt right instantly.  I really like math and science, but they didn’t fit the way drawing fit.  Then the internet rolled around, and there were message boards and there were forums exploring all of these different drawing techniques.  Digital drawing started coming about.  Every moment that I was [drawing] it just felt right.  It was the path that I took and the path that I wanted to take, and it led to college and college led to work and work led to where I am now.

GO: You worked for about a season on Aqua Teen Hunger Force and about a season on Squidbillies as an animator, but on Archer you are listed as a “lead illustrator”.  What exactly does a lead illustrator do?

AT: That’s an interesting question.  Everyone else at the studio will probably tell you that 90 percent of our animation is done in the animation department with after effects, but the majority of the legwork —- and this is my own personal opinion —- is done in the illustration department to set up strong animation.  So anyone who’s seen an episode of Archer will know that a lot of the animation we have is limited, that’s television animation as a whole, so everything that we do in the illustration department is done from real life photo reference.  So if you see Archer taking a drink of whiskey, we actually had someone dress up in a suit and a tie and hold a whiskey glass and act out all the steps, which we will photograph and then download to the computer and use that as a reference.

GO: You use a lot of Atlanta-based models as your models for the show, is that correct?

AT: Yes we do, it’s interesting.  Lucky Yates is the voice of Krieger, but he’s the visual model for Ray Gillette.  So we use his face as Ray but his voice as Krieger.  Actually a lot of the illustrators on staff are the body models for general episode characters.  For season 2 to 3 I was Archer, I was the body model for Archer.  Anything that a male character did for seasons 2 and 3 I probably dressed up in a costume and acted it out and somebody else drew.  The way that I look at it, in terms of our studio set-up, the illustration department is really animation key-posing [note: key-posing is a process in which animators draw out the main postures and actions of a character sequentially], and the animation department deal with animation in-betweens, and they put all the beautiful, wonderful effects [together].

[Editor's Note: At this point, Toews had believed that Archer had been nominated for an Emmy for Best Comedy Series, so as a stalwart and consummately professional journalist I of course confronted this topic.  I asked hard-hitting questions, such as, "How does it feel to be nominated for an Emmy?", which he answered bravely and beautifully.  We laughed, we cried, we ordered another round of beer.  It was a fantastic example of Q and A journalism, but sadly we were to find out days later that Archer had not been nominated after all, and thus the beauty and the poetry that was this segment of my interview was rendered irrelevant].

GO: Where do you find inspiration for your illustrating in general?

AT: Illustrating on Archer, we actually have a lot of people apply for the position, and a lot of very talented illustrators, and when they start to work on the show a lot of them might have a hard time.  The process that we use, we use Adobe Illustrator, and that’s not an illustration program AT ALL.  It’s really for a lot of vector-based graphics, a lot of graphic design stuff, so the fact that we’re doing anatomical drawings for an animated show in Adobe Illustrator is really hard to grasp.  The learning curve’s pretty high.  We’ve actually let really talented artists go that couldn’t really get the process.  So finding inspiration for people working on the show and finding inspiration personally, they’re kind of two different beasts.  You want to try to find that connection that keeps everybody excited.  For example, at work we’ll have incentives to keep people there.  We’ll do barbecues out back.  We work in this wonderful, beautiful kind of warehouse area in the woods.  There’s a park to walk around in.  So every once in a while we’ll go out and share a beer, have a burger, have a hotdog, and just chitchat, and that kind of inspires people to be at work.  We’ll have viewing days, so halfway through the season as it’s airing when we end an episode on Fridays, we’ll watch the episode and drink beer.  So it’s kind of like, “Hey, this is the work you did…”

GO: So tell me everything that happens in Season 5.

AT: Oh man… I’m pretty sure Archer turns bionic, he turns into a robot, thus living his own fears.  I’m pretty sure Baby Seamus comes back with some kind of vendetta to kill Archer, he’s got to be at least five or six by now, so he’s probably learned Krav Maga and kung fu, and he’s probably going to come back and try to take down ISIS, just some revenge scheme.  I think that… actually when Baby Seamus comes back, he’ll be riding Kazak, the dog from the land of Season 4.  I think he rides him into battle, I’m pretty sure.  If I think like [Archer creator] Adam Reed, I’m pretty sure that’s the direction he’s gonna go.

GO: And who doesn’t?  Very typical thinker Adam Reed.

AT: [laughing] He likes to give the audience what they need, and I think what they need is more baby assassin’s.  I’m just thinking out loud.

GO: I hope that’s what happens.

AT: Me too.

GO: If you could have any superpower, what would it be, and how would it lead to your untimely death?

AT: Oh man, I already know.  I’ve always loved Nightcrawler growing up.  I would love to have his power to teleport.  I don’t know if that’s explanatory of how it would lead to my demise, but you know how Nightcrawler says he has to know where he is going in order to teleport there?  I would try that and I feel like I would be severed in half.  I would teleport into something, and I would just find myself just in half.

GO: You would just ultimately be killed by teleporting inside a wall or something?

AT: Yeah, like half would be inside the wall and the other side’s out of the wall, or I would be impaled on a telephone pole.  I would probably be trying to show off for a girl, and try to do something impressive, and teleport and mess it up, and then I would be severed and dead.

GO: Or maybe you’d teleport, and you would be picturing a house, but you’re picturing it Google Earth style, so you teleport 500 feet in the air…

AT: Yeah, or I would look at a picture on the internet and be like, “Oh, Barbados, I’ve always wanted to go there,” POOF! And then I would end up in Seattle, impaled on a train.

GO: Which Archer character do you identify with the most?

AT: [pauses, thinking for a moment]  My kneejerk reaction is to say Archer, only because I’ve dressed up like him.  But that’s really the extent of my connection with him.  I do think that sometimes I inadvertly will say something that will offend somebody, but I really mean well, which I think is kind of Archer’s personality.  He means well but his good intentions are often terrible.  The other character I thought of immediately was Noah from the pirate episode when he gets captured by pirates, and he’s in a terrible situation but he still tries to make the best of it by being the first mate and kind of controlling the chaos, so in terms of working… you might find yourself working a tough or arduous situation where you gotta work a weekend and you gotta work all these hours, but you still try to make the best of it… I would say Archer and Noah slammed together as a hybrid child, that would be my character.

GO: What is your favorite beer?

AT: Guiness, as of two years ago…

GO: What is your favorite Bond movie?

AT: Oh, there are so many good and bad ones, even the bad ones that are so bad they’re good.  I would say for nostalgic purposes, Goldeneye, because that was the first introduction of a Bond movie with multi-media outlets, so that was the first Bond movie I could really dive into.

The First and Hardest Geek Trivia in Atlanta! Wager your wit against other knowledgeable nerds on topics like Science!, Sex, Star Wars, Movies, Tv Shows, Pirates, Muppets & Much Much More! Geek Trivia is Every Wednesday Night at 8:30pm!

The First and Hardest Geek Trivia in Atlanta! Wager your wit against other knowledgeable nerds on topics like Science!, Sex, Star Wars, Movies, Tv Shows, Pirates, Muppets & Much Much More! Geek Trivia is Every Wednesday Night at 8:30pm!

The First and Hardest Geek Trivia in Atlanta! Wager your wit against other knowledgeable nerds on topics like Science!, Sex, Star Wars, Movies, Tv Shows, Pirates, Muppets & Much Much More! Geek Trivia is Every Wednesday Night at 8:30pm!

The First and Hardest Geek Trivia in Atlanta! Wager your wit against other knowledgeable nerds on topics like Science!, Sex, Star Wars, Movies, Tv Shows, Pirates, Muppets & Much Much More! Geek Trivia is Every Wednesday Night at 8:30pm!

We are CLOSED for the 4th of July. We will see you again tomorrow!