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Calgary Herald

A fine pairing: Calgary-born comedian, author and radio host Ophira Eisenberg mixes comedy and wine for new show

In 2006, Ophira Eisenberg returned to Calgary for her first homecoming show since moving to New York City a few years earlier. Article content While she had lived in the U.S. for three years at that point, she still had plenty of ties to her hometown. She went to elementary and high school here. She took ballet lessons here. She attended the University of Calgary. She still had family in town. Article content Article content 'Everyone from my past came,' says Eisenberg, in a phone interview from New York. 'Your job is to now entertain them and make them laugh. I felt it was not so much a reunion but maybe like being alive at my own funeral.' Article content Article content Eisenberg has been back many times since, of course, and has enjoyed considerable success in her adopted country in the years since that 2006 show. It tends to give her local appearances a bit of a triumphant-homecoming buzz these days. She may be best known for hosting the NPR comedy trivia series Ask Me Another for nine years, which found her quizzing an assortment of celebs that included everyone from Patrick Stewart to Yo-Yo Ma and Bob The Drag Queen. Her very funny and revealing 2013 memoir, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy, was well-received and has been optioned for a feature film. She has had four comedy albums/specials, including 2022's Plant-Based Jokes. She has appeared on Comedy Central, This Week at The Comedy Cellar, Kevin Hart's LOL Network, HBO's Girls, Gotham Live, The Late Late Show, The Today Show, and VH-1 and received rave reviews from the New York Times, New York Magazine and Article content Article content Article content She is now in her third season hosting the podcast Parenting is a Joke, a co-production with iHeart Radio. Her one-woman show Leaving a Mark: A Comedy About Scars had its Off-Broadway debut in 2023 and became a New York Times Critic's Pick. Article content Her newest venture will bring her back to Calgary on Sunday for the Canadian debut of Grapes of Laughs, a combination comedy show and wine tasting event at The Artist Lounge. Eisenberg first began performing it at the Betty, a popular restaurant in New York's Lower East Side. In Calgary, she will be joined by CBC's Corey Mack and fellow Canuck stand-up comedians Nigel Lawrence and Brittany Lyseng for an afternoon show that has each comedy set expertly paired with wine by the Lounge's co-owner and resident wine expert Khalid Omokanye. Article content 'I feel like I'm an aspiring wine snob,' Eisenberg says. 'I don't know all that much. I know the typical things, just enough to get me in trouble if I ever talk to someone who really knows their stuff. I'm fascinated, but I just can't keep up. I think those tastings are hilarious because I love the adjectives. I love hearing when someone tastes the wine and says like 'tobacco and duck and plum.' I just think that's so wild because I sometimes can smell them, but sometimes I'm like 'wet garbage, doll heads … ' I thought how fun would it be to find a wine expert that has great personality and combine this.'