Studs Terkel. Gone. Today.
Chicago Tribune photo by Charles Osgood. May 16, 2007.
“I’m still in touch, but I’m ready to go,” he said last year at his last public appearance with the [Community Media Workshop], a nonprofit that recognizes Chicago reporters who take risks in covering the city.
Write about him later, okay?
Meantime: Rick Kogan, in the Chicago Tribune.
And: Division Street: America.
Almanac
For three seasons I’ve run a little hour-long radio show called Almanac, once a week. I usually pick a topic and choose songs, short stories and interview friends and others about that topic. Then I put it all together.
Allow me to share the latest episode, a bit different fare than usual. I wrote a short fictional story as an opener to each song.
featuring music from Beirut, Andrew Bird, Ben Folds, The Solids, Bob Dylan, Denison Witmer, Elton John, Doveman, and Iron & Wine.
Right click here to listen or download
East Village Radio
This weekend I met some friends at a party for East Village Radio at the South Street Seaport. To be honest, my motivations were more for the seaport than the party, but I headed my way down there with the hopes of a VIP pass (read free beer) and a good view of the fading light over shipmasts. It turned out to be a wicked party hosted by KRS-One and featuring a bunch of other amazing talent. Maybe someday soon, I’ll write some posts about the talent. But here I want to give a big ups to East Village Radio. The party was awesome and they put together a pretty great service. They are a free, internet only independent radio station operating out of a storefront closet in Manhattan. One of the few signs of anti-conglomeration media floating in the ether.
Dear Clusterflock: Dirty Libruls
Does NPR have a leftward tilt? Or does it merely reflect Steven Colbert’s description of “reality’s well-known liberal bias?”
My Favorite Things
I’m watching season two of The Wire, and Bodie is driving around listening to A Prairie Home Companion. A conglomeration of bliss.
Bodie is flipping through stations as Keillor’s monologue begins.
“Is this a Philly station?”
He shakes his head, confused.
“Why would anyone ever want to leave Baltimore.”
McCain Offers $300M Award for New Campaign Staff
“Most of my existing team receives great compensation from the various corporations for which they lobby,” said Mr. McCain, “but they still can’t keep my White House bid off the guardrails. I’ll miss them at first but I think I’ll get over it.”
Immaterial Sound
Postcard. L’Escalier Richelieu [The Odessa/Potemkin Steps]. Odessa, Ukraine. Detroit Publishing Company. Circa 1890-1900. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)
What an utterly mad thing to imagine, and how utterly wonderful to document its failure in such detail.
The thing imagined? The sound produced upon the ‘Odessa Steps’ when a pram tumbles down them in the manner of the famous sequence from Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin.
The obvious solution was to borrow a baby carriage from some young, unsuspecting Odessan parents, and then just give it the old heave-ho. This did not, however, go exactly according to plan . . . .
(Transcript and audio file of Jared Manasek’s Savvy Traveler broadcast here.)
Chris Ware for This American Life
Coudal Partners posted this but just in case you didn’t see:
Oooo Baby…
Jeff Beck- Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, from Wired.
I’ll bet Michael Grant Smith remembers that one. Anyone else?
I just heard it on my favorite Internet radio station. Here’s a shameless plug:
I promise time well spent.
Listen!
U.S. Approves Airstrikes Against Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh’s head is round and bumpy, like the moon.
Washington, D.C. — In a bold move designed to fight “cowardly acts of international terrorism”, U.S. military forces revealed plans to launch pre-emptive airstrikes against radio talkshow blowhard Rush Limbaugh. The vitriolic pundit had spewed threatening rhetoric for years, all the while declaring his bizarre broadcasts to be “for peaceful domestic purposes”.
“It was bad enough Limbaugh threatened the new world order,” said Pentagon spokesdroid Major Lance Corporal, “but we couldn’t take a chance he would escalate his maniacal aggression against normal Americans.”
The New Yorker on TAL
One is so reluctant to express any degree of dislike for “This American Life,” the popular public-radio storytelling program created by Ira Glass twelve years ago, and featuring such stars as David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, and John Hodgman, that one’s inclination is to avoid the use of the first-person pronoun for as long as possible, in order not to be identified with any reservations concerning the show.
Six Questions
According to a personality test developer on the Brian Lehrer show this morning, there are six questions that along with resumes, references, and other indices can show an employer where a potential employee should fit into their organization. According to the order read on the show, they are:
Answer True/False:
1. Before an important meeting I think carefully about what I will say
2. Most people think I am pretty laidback
3. When I was little people thought I was cute
4. When I am annoyed I let people know
5. Rules are made to be broken
6. I like foreign movies
99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story
The Third Coast Festival, in collaboration with cartoonist Matt Madden (99 Ways to Tell a Story), proudly announces 99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story - an experiment in documentary radio style and execution inspired by the French literary group Oulipo.
The TCF invites producers of all artistic backgrounds and experience levels to submit a finished, short (2:30) audio piece for 99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story. In the Oulipo tradition of imposing constraint on the creative process, each submission must exhibit a distinct production style and include a specific first sentence and three particular sounds, which have been pre-selected by the Third Coast Festival and Madden.
Details may be found on the TCF website.
Mark Lombardi
From NPR:
A few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an FBI agent called the Whitney Museum of American Art and asked to see a drawing on exhibit there. The piece was by Mark Lombardi, an artist who had committed suicide the year before. Using just a pencil and a huge sheet of paper, Lombardi had created an intricate pattern of curves and arcs to illustrate the links between global finance and international terrorism.
In other drawings, Lombardi explored subjects ranging from the collapse of the Vatican bank to the Iran-Contra scandal. The results are not only detailed slices of history, but also works of art — some looking like constellations of stars on a dark night, others swirling clouds of abstract lines and points.
Community Radio
[Zany radio ad music; fades beneath stereotypical obnoxious commercial radio announcer voiceover] Down at KFAI community radio, we don’t play ridiculous ads that sound like this! In fact, we don’t play ads at all! [Honk of a horn and a slide whistle drop; into little boy’s earnest voice] Then how does KFAI stay on the air, mister? [Announcer] I thought you’d never ask, Jimmy! But I’ll be honest…uh…I don’t know. [Zany music screeches to a halt; Jimmy cries, then fades out; begin real voiceover] Listener support keeps KFAI on the air. That’s how community radio works. Because of people just like you. Right now, KFAI is looking for listeners to help us answer phones during our upcoming pledge drive. It’s easy and fun — and we really do appreciate it. [Frightening overproduced commercial radio announcer voiceover again] So if you prefer your radio without boundaries — and lame-o commercials for tanning salons and muffler shops — volunteer today.
Joe Frank
He’s the only public radio commentator for these weird, dark end times. NPR should ask him back…give him a show…let him speak his weird, dark mind 24 hours a day. Just put their best microphone right up to his skull.
Since that’s unlikely to happen, you should go register to listen to his free archives, then pay to hear everything else. Really.