NPR is ever more desperate for funds, and now has a new, somewhat shady sponsor:
(Check the date.) Sponsor message ran at end of this story: NPR- Have Cell Phone Rings Gone Too Far . BTW, that version of “NY, NY” in that NPR story is Wendy Mae Chambers on her Car Horn Organ:
A new HV story by Queena Kim airs this weekend on NPR Latino USA— Every Saturday, hundreds of Latino immigrants pilgrimage to Our Lady The Queen of the Angels, Los Angeles’ oldest mission Church, to get their baby’s baptized. The Church baptizes fifty babies an hour — more than three hundred every Saturday. Unlike other churches, Our Lady doesn’t require parents or godparents to take classes beforehand. All you do is sign-up. Abel Salas walks us through “the McDonald’s of Baptism.” (5:20 mp3):
This week’s HV cast is the next in our series of readings by troops back from Iraq and Afghanistan, from the NEA book project, Operation Homecoming. Dr. Edward Jewell reads “Life on the USNS Comfort” (mp3), from his journals while aboard a Navy hospital ship on which he served as Commander. Music by Jess Atkins (4:09):
That title sure got your attention. So I recently started internet dating. Which is kind of funny because the first collaborative radio piece Kara and I ever did was on sex and the Internet.
Filling out the profile I realized a few things 1) Pro Tools figured prominently, 2) I mentioned my cat three times and 3) while both 1 & 2 seemed sad, I figured I could exploit this online meet-and-greet for our Song and Memory series. Hence, my profile says,
“If you have a really cool story about your most memorable song from childhood…let me know, you might go on the radio.
Really. Write and let me know. Even if you don’t add me to your hotlist.”
And it worked! Men ripped through my ethernet cable to share their most heartwrenching/heartwarming memories. OK. Not really. But I have gone on a few dates (fun, but no love connection Chuck) and found one promising Song and Memory story (it involves cheesecake, Brooklyn and NWA). I’ve also gathered sounds. Because if you date me, you date my microphone.
Date Sound #1:
Peter is a Ph.d guy who makes music videos, robots and audio software. He’s also into exploring things like abandoned subway tunnels. Rather than doing the standard bar and drinks, our date consisted of sneaking down a ladder at the end of an MTA platform. He brought his camera to film. I brought my stereo microphone to record. And no, we didn’t make out.
Date Sound #2:
Anders grew up in Sweden. He sent me this email.
“Not sure if this is a cool story, but my most favorite childhood song comes from a schlocky Swedish comedy duo called “Trazan and Banarne.” Back in the day, me and basically every other Swedish kid under age 10 would obsessively be up by 7a.m. watching two grown men in monkey suits singing with their mouths full of bananas.”
The date was standard (drinks) and the story was just OK. But now I have the sound of two Swedish men in monkey suits, singing in Swedish and eating bananas.
Which goes to show that maybe I’m not really looking for love at all…maybe all I need to be happy is good sound.
And my cat.
Update: Episode One of TAL TV now online.
Original Post: The TV vers of This American Life premieres tonite (Thurs Mar 22) on Showtime. They’ve also revamped their web. And I.Glass will tell all on the upcoming Bob Edwards Weekend— here’s the promo:
Sometimes I think there needs to be cussing on public radio. Not because I want to go head-to-head with FCC Chairman Martin about issues of free speech. (En garde!) But sometimes the people you interview use sh-#$%$ and f-%$# and b-^#%@$ more often than the word “and.” It’s just who they are. So when you take out the “bad” words you lose, I think, an accurate representation of their f*cking awesome personalities.
Case in point, Bobby Hansson. Bobby is the artist featured in our recent piece Tin Can Orchestra. He is colorful in dress (see pictures from previous post) and in language. Admittedly, there were times when I cringed a little as I held the microphone because what Bobby was saying was inappropriate and cheesy. But there were other times when I just laughed. He was quirky. I liked him. So I was a little sad that I had to cut out some of Bobby’s zingers.
Here is my mini tribute to Bobby’s colorful mouth. It was done in a flash. I’m pretty sure there is better stuff in the raw tape, but at least it’s something, right?
(The piece of opera music is from Bobby’s record player that he connected to a power strip in his blacksmith shop. It’s Maria Callas, don’t ask me from what opera. My mom would kill me if she found out I didn’t know.)
PS–Is it just me or does the FCC chairman look like he’s twelve?
This week’s HV cast is “Rocky Mountain High” (mp3), from the Song and Memory series, produced by Ann Heppermann, Rick Moody & Kara Oehler. Jeffery Carpenter explains the sectarian severance special connection to John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” (4:11):
(Also check WFMU’s X-rated John Denver.)
The 1st in our series Project Healing Waters is the NPR Story of the Day podcast.
A new series daily this week for NPR Day to Day: Retired Navy Captain Ed Nicholson is an avid fly-fishermen. He realized fishing would be good therapy for disabled veterans. So he hooked up with Trout Unlimited and the Federation of Fly Fishers, and with private donations and volunteer guides, they began teaching wounded vets, including many amputees, how to fly-fish. Project Healing Waters, now regularly takes vets on these therapeutic fishing outings. Captain Eivind Forseth spent a day catching trout at Rose River Farm in Virginia.
The site for Thembi’s AIDS Diary, A Year in the Life of a South African Teenager (Radio Diaries– The AIDS Diary Project) now has a blog, lotsa Flash, mp3s, and is preparing an AIDS Action Toolkit for .edu and avocacy.
Weekend America ran the HV story “Tin Can Orchestra” by Ann Heppermann & Kara Oehler: Bobby Hansson is a phtogrpaher, filmmaker, blacksmith, and tin can artist. He’s created an orchestra of musical instruments from them, and other dumpstered materials. They’ve never been played all together before. Until now, for this radio piece. His book is The Fine Art of the Tin Can: Techniques and Inspirations.
This is Bobby Hansson with his friend Andrew Hayes holding the “sascatuner,” a musical instrument made out of a bicycle seat, two horns, plastic tubing and a trumpet mouthpiece.
This is where Bobby fires the coals for his blacksmithing work. He built the coal forge himself.
Bobby’s blacksmith shop. He built it himself out of old tires, recylced wood and bottles for the windows. To the right,
you can see the speaker where he rigged up a record player to blast
opera music.
Bobby sitting in the kitchen table with his own rendition of American Gothic hanging above him.
Bobby Hansson playing “Big Gray Elephant” on an instrument he made out of a giant maple syrup can (0:29):
The NPR Liaison To Independent Producers, Paul Ingles, has transcribed some of Nancy Updike’s excellent 3rd Coast Conference session called “Die, Mediocrity, Die!.”
Nancy says the enemy of most producers is not “badness” but rather, “O.K.-ness.” She says, “Have you ever noticed how easy it is to ignore a radio story?” After a few minutes, “it’s just noises and voices and you’re cooking or whatever and it’s hard to get back into it. So you just say, I’ll wait until the next story to tune back in and pay attention.”
This mental drift is our “enemy,” says Nancy. And we have to challenge ourselves to continually ask, “Is there a better way to tell this story? Is there a better piece of tape to get in there?”
You can listen to the whole hour at Third Coast, or:
(Full disclosure: Nancy has produced a lot of stories for HV, and Paul has also worked with us.)
Great StoryCorps® this morn on NPR-ME. Judge Joe Pigott of Jackson, MS talks about his favorite criminal.
There’s been a congestion of conferences lately striving to save our sorry pubradio asses. Their themes range from the grand From Participatory Culture to Participatory Democracy to the mundane Making the Transition. They’re put on by groups with amorphous promises in their names: Beyond Broadcast Digital Distribution Consortium Integrated Media Association — mix & match to create your own exciting organizational combos.
Once conferences were safe excuses to get away from spouses and commune with co-workers. Now they’re powerpoint infested face2face fests, where people stare at their computer screens. Once there was a time-honored tradition of spending conference nights genuinely interacting with real folk, i.e., chasing hookers and hootch. Nowadays, everyone runs back to their hotel rooms to blog, stream, cast, and flickr.
You must post your opinion, preferably at length, prodigiously linked to all other opinions, and prefaced with urgent proclamations of bullet-pointed self-perpetuation:
And don’t forget to mention Web 2.0, even tho you’ve no notion wtf that means. I, however, know exactly what Web 2.0 is, and I’m willing to share this insight; as soon as I’m invited to give the keynote at the next conference.
Using our NPR story “Listening to Northern Lights” (NPR Lost and Found Sound), Joel Halvorson of NASA Earth-Sun Museum Alliance made a video for the Minnesota Planetarium (for use in dome, thus the circular frame of the images):
This week’s HV cast is “Pedestrian Fanatic” (mp3) by Abner Serd: The paving of America as seen from the shoulders and sidewalks of our country’s roads. Musings-in-motion recorded during a 5000 trek from Arizona to Georgia to Maine. “It is becoming illegal to travel this country by foot.” Music by Jeff Arntsen of Racket Ship. (9:55):
From the latest issue of the Washingtonian: Has Success Spoiled NPR?
"It would be an immense source of pride for me if NPR could find in its heart new beats and new sounds -- not radically different ones, just different enough that they would belong to the people who are now 17 but who are going to be listening 40 and 50 years from now." --Robert Krulwich
"[NPR is] the retirement community of the air. What was once an insurgent radio movement now sounds like Chet Huntley reading the evening news.” --Alex Beam, Boston Globe
"NPR is run by newspaper people. Sometimes I think they don’t even like radio." --Bob Edwards
Caught a bit on NPR the other morning on “Embrace the Suck – A Pocket Guide to Milspeak.” My favorite term was “fobbit,” which basically replaces REMF as the term of choice in a place where there is no rear but plenty of fortified bases.
Here’s one Fobbit def, and another — the latter being more informative but perhaps a bit less kind. And here’s the Bob on the FOB Comic Archive.
Journalism.org just released a massive report on The State of the News Media 2007. We @ HV are most taken with revelations in the Radio chapter, such as:
When you finish with the factoids, do waste some more time with their “Design Your Own Chart” feature.
Skye Rohde’s sound and images from her day at the annual cultural show in Goroka, in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. This is the social event of the year, a swirl of colors and costumes, traditional songs and dances. (Broadcast: Mar 12 2007 on NPR Day to Day):