[2] He attended the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where he majored in screenwriting at the Rita & Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing.

[5] Kalan occasionally appears in bit parts on The Daily Show and has provided voice-over narration for "The Decider" comic-book segments.

Following a column he wrote in the August 3, 2007 issue of the Metro, Kalan was fired for writing a self-deprecating joke about the increasing obsolescence of the newspaper industry.

This was followed by a brief article in New York Magazine on August 20, 2007, about the incident,[7] which was heavily publicized on internet blogs including Media Bistro, Huffington Post, and Gawker.

Many blog postings about the incident imply that the Metro violated basic principles of journalism and freedom of expression in firing Kalan.

[10] On April 14, 2017, Kalan appeared on Episode 1103 of the Netflix production of Mystery Science Theater 3000 along with series creator Joel Hodgson.

One supplemental episode of the Flop House, in which Kalan improvised a rapid-fire pitch for a film based on the comic Ziggy became a minor viral Internet success after being posted on Gawker.

[12] Dan McCoy and Kalan have also been published in comedy magazine Whim Quarterly and film zine I Love Bad Movies.