Four of July Fireworks
Here's my popular "4th of July Fireworks" audio diary, popular this time of year. Give it a listen, it's really good, if I say so myself...
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Why Alix Spiegel is the best NPR Voice
I've long loved the TAL tao. The flippant story-telling attitude on PRI's This American Life. It's infiltrating the rest of Public Radio. Thank you, God. Alix Spiegel is the best at it.
Here's a great example of what I'm talking about, a story Spiegel filed in 2009. You should go here and listen to the story if you want to hear this in action. Spiegel demonstrates a sly way of painting this Dr Wennberg as a very intelligent, artistic type. She didn't have to say that. She didn't just say, "Dr Wennberg is smart" and leave it at that. She showed us:
Hell’s Bells
I arrived at AC/DC a few years late. Because of my age, they hit their popularity peak about 10 years before I was old enough to care. So, while I'm not sure how good of an influence they are on me, a trying-but-failing Christian man, I've always liked their songs. My favorite obscure AC/DC song is the mellow "Ride On."
Anyway, one night I found my old "AC/DC Greatest Hits" cassette and I was listening toand thinking about the song "Hell's Bells" and how wild it would be to hear that song 100 years ago. Back then, there wasn't any recorded music and pop music was orchestral marches and symphonies. The guitar wasn't that popular and the electric guitar was unheard. Reverb, feedback and heavy distortion and the modern drum set where also years away.
Now, this little daydream was happening around the time the HBO series Band of Brothers was debuting. So my little daydream took me to a foxhole around Bastogne, during the Battle-of-the-Bulge seige.
What would it be like to hear a song like that without all the stuff leading up to it? Would it be recognized as post-modern music, or some sort of noise that didn't resemble music at all? I mean, I'm no hardcore fan but I really like most of the popular AC/DC songs. I consider them music. But I had Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys and Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, etc. I experienced an evolution to the music. But what if I hadn't?
Seafood Joint
This is one of my favorite pieces, because it was one of the first original ideas I had that I wrote and produced based on a fictional-fantasy type situation that had roots in real life. Fact was, I did go to a Red Lobster with a black family -- their 9 year old was best friends with my 9 year old. Fact is, I got some dirty looks. I couldn't believe it. I now live in the south, but spent most of my life in the north. No one actually said anything to me, but I felt like they were pretty peeved I was eating at a table with these friends of ours. If you want to be ultra-liberal, you might make a case that I was the racist one, because in real life I may have felt something that didn't actually exist. Were the eyes seering holes through me my imagination? I maintain: no. But, make your case if you want.
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AAA-Funny Spam
I wonder if terrorists know about spam. Not in the way that they terrorize the rest of us by using spam, which is definitely what they are already doing, but in the way that they could send unbreakable code by using spam. Have you read one of these spam messages lately? Here's a recent one I found in my spam folder. The subject was, "Are you happy?" and the text went on for pages, many pages, single spaced and dense. It began:
"He grew did; saying at the knit delay same time, 'You enthusiastic see I thus"
It sounds like Yoda or Beowulf, remember Beowulf? And it went on like that for pages.
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