61. LIFERS - Gwen Ihnat

Since 1993, The Onion’s AV Club has been the source for some of the best pop-culture writing around. And since their offices were located in Chicago, it had also been a distinct source of pride for midwesterners. All that changed when new owners G/O Media announced that they would be shutting down the Chicago office and moving operations to L.A. to “grow its entertainment relationships”. Members of the staff were given an ultimatum: Move to L.A. or quit. Gwen Ihnat —who’d been with the site since 2013 and is a veteran Chicago journalist if there ever was one— was one of those writers that decided to move on. On this episode we don’t really talk about the A.V. Club debacle (for contractual reasons, Gwen can’t discuss it), but we DO talk about her time at The Illinois Entertainer, screwing up the words to a Liz Phair song, Cheap Trick, Tom Jones, Jared Leto, pissing off Liane Moriarty, and why Gwen’s to blame for Local H’s cover of “Shock The Monkey”.