I came late to the This American Life party, possibly because my parents only listened to the news on NPR and I never knew the station offered more. Over several years, I gradually broadened my public radio horizons until I am now a junkie. Brian Lehrer, Radio Lab, Morning Edition, even Jonathan Schwartz. I am a *monthly sustainer*, god help me.
This, of course, drives me further into deep blue-state-stereotype territory. As it is, I begin way too many sentences with “Oh! Have you read that piece in the New Yorker?”
Still, I am now at the TAL party. The food is great, the music is great, and I’m standing there, in a small group of funny dorks roughly my age, laughing at something once of them just said about the NYT Thursday Styles section, when I realize: HBO has lost its hold on me. Showtime has, in addition to TAL, Weeds, Californication, and Dexter. HBO? has reruns.
This is a jarring realization, but life goes on, the earth only spins in one direction, and we all must put our brave faces on as we march into an uncertain future.
When I listen to the podcasts at work, I picture Ira Glass as the Verizon guy (who apparently has a brain tumor?). This is embedded enough that last night, when I saw Ira Glass live at the TAL show at NYU, his voice felt disassociated from the guy onstage. Still, the two-hour multimedia extravaganza was fucking awesome, the best live show of anything I’ve seen since August: Osage County. And now I am stuck yearning for pay cable so that I could watch Season 2. Maybe WNYC will offer THAT as its thank you gift this spring!
Also: the Rebecca who introduced me to TAL has a new blog called the Opposite of Static, which is a lovely name. Maybe I only think that because it reflects a sentiment I agree with, that all of us are several different people simultaneously, the selves that we were & the selves we will be, and that we are morphing and changing and being holograms of ourselves at any given moment.
I have four Rebeccas. That seems excessive, doesn’t it?
hi! it’s your old friend who was rumored to have once said “gee, i can’t wait to read about our upcoming road trip on babblebook!”
can your blog be LJ-fed the way the opposite of static can?
hi! yes, i know you can, though i don’t know how. Ms. Opposite of Static herself should, though — she rigged that up for herself.
At least you can say you support them. I feel like a stealer. I have the dream to one day have enough money to be one of the “NPR is made possible by listeners like you.”
We wanted to go to the live showing here, but it would have been projected on a screen and that is not as much fun as seeing the real people in the flesh. I was spoiled after seeing wait wait dont tell me in DC.