While I'm Picking On NPR Peronsalities...

Terry Gross had a great interview on Fresh Air the other day with scientist and devout atheist Richard Dawkins. I was interested to hear it as I had heard a bit about his new book ("The God Delusion") and heard him painted as being overly zealous in his anti-religion crusade. Hearing him talk though he really is pretty easy to swallow (though not necessarily to agree with).

But anyway....Terry, in asking him about evolution in relation to morality, noted all our horrible problems - "wars, violence, rape, and decapitations"! Man...not a day goes by that I don't have to kick one or more severed heads out of the way just to walk down the street. It really is an epidemic.

The show can be found here.

Podcast of the Week

This week's podcast highlight is NPR's "All Songs Considered". This podcast, which varies in length and content from week to week, usually leaves it to host Bob Boilen to sound old and nerdy as he discusses the latest in indie and alternative rock (and various other genres). For this week's podcast though he drags Robert Christgau, Meredith Ochs, and Will Hermes along to raise the geek factor considerably. These four could not sound anymore like they belong on NPR, and any less like they should be discussing Modest Mouse, Wilco, Arcade Fire, etc....It's like if your mom was all of a sudden into your favorite band.

The show's subject - Spring Music Preview. It is a great chance to hear yet to be released tracks from Wilco, Bright Eyes, Mavis Staples, Tori Amos, Kings of Leon and others.

The show's low point - the reviewers together singing a bit of Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" before playing a cover version by a country singer named Elizabeth Cook (from whom they also play a song called "Sometimes It Takes Balls To Be A Woman").

Also check out - "Guest DJ" episodes from some weeks back. There is one with Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) and one with Lily Allen. Unfortunately too often Bob just leads them into playing what he wants to hear rather than something they've chosen. I think it's Conor Oberst who tells Bob he was heavily influenced by a certain track on an album, but Bob decides he'd rather play a different track from that album.

A Picture Can't Replace 1000 Words : Review - This American Life the TV Show

(Warning to LM - pee is mentioned repeatedly in the following blog. I'm not joking).

I see today the Tribune Magazine's cover story is on Ira Glass and the TAL TV show. I've been meaning to get my thoughts out on this and figure I should do it before I read the article.

I called Comcast to pay a bill a few weeks ago and they made me an offer on Showtime that I couldn't refuse as I was anxious to see the forthcoming television version of my favorite radio program, This American Life. Though the show doesn't officially premiere until later this month, I was pleasantly surprised to find the first episode available on demand. Even though it was very late and I needed to get to bed, I couldn't resist watching it right away.

Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly/Serenity) has made the accusation in a number of DVD commentaries that TV is too often just radio with pictures - talking heads spitting out a script. So what is the expectation when radio becomes TV? I wonder what people expected and how they reacted when their favorite radio programs made the move to TV in the 50s?

There's not much about the TV version of TAL that won't be familiar to fans of the radio version. The show opens with a humorous mini-story to introduce the weeks' topic. The story, a woman's reminiscence of a school field trip in which she urinated on the bus ride, is re-enacted. Stories that involve puddles of urine are, in my opinion, best left to the imagination - but there, in the first 5 minutes of the first ever television episode of TAL, is a puddle of pee (or some appropriate facsimile). Not a good start in my opinion.

Skip to Ira Glass sitting at a desk in in the middle of a rural road. He introduces the show and the topic, much like he always does on the radio, but this time we get to see him. And he's sitting in the middle of the road. This may be the most interesting visual of the whole show.

Now to today's show in 2 acts (it was late and I sadly don't remember the topic). First act - a beloved bull that was cloned, only to be not much like the first bull. Wait, I've heard this one before. Yes, this story was previously aired on the radio program. Well, there must be something interesting to see then right? Well, we all know what a bull looks like right? We can all drum up a mental image of a salt-of-the-earth rancher and his wife. The only visual that really could not be replaced here is of the dead bull's hide being pulled out of the closet. The rancher even got mauled by the cloned bull while the crew was with him, but if they got video of it, they've spared us the sight (why couldn't they also spare us the sight of a puddle of urine on a bus floor?).

Act 2 - a group of performance artists in NYC pull one off on a struggling small time rock band by learning all of their songs and filling the room at one of their gigs and singing along and acting like they were really into it. Wait, I've heard this one before too. Oh, so that's what the band looks like. Is this footage someone took from the actual gig, or a re-enactment?

It all feels a bit like cheap History Channel re-enactments (why is this even on Showtime?) and I'm afraid the TAL folks have really blown it here. It's the existing TAL fans that are most likely to watch the show initially and create any kind of buzz about it. It's an insult to the fans to just repackage previously aired stories. I'm not sure who the producers of this TV version are, but it seems like they've put video cameras in the hands of radio people rather than putting a great concept into the hands of experienced filmmakers. I hate to say it, but at least as far as the episode goes, TAL on TV really is just radio with pictures.