Posts Tagged ‘NPR’

Wake-up call

May 11, 2019

Hey! Who shit on my radio?

Ho, ho. Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic examines NPR’s new “Morning Edition” theme and finds it wanting.

He’s not the only one. Composer Timo Andres and jazz singer Theo Bleckmann had thoughts as well.

“For me, it was so reminiscent of childhood, of car rides to school,” Andres told me later of the old theme. “Even though, objectively, it sounds like an artifact from a universe where Steely Dan was co-opted into writing state-propaganda music.”

The new theme, meanwhile, was summarized more pithily by Bleckmann. “Yeah, it sucks,” he said.

Ouch.

But what do you expect when you commission a committee to compose your theme song?

Robert A. Heinlein was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right on target when he noted that a committee was “a life form with six or more legs and no brain.”

And yeah, the new theme: It sucks.

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Posted in Arts & letters, Audio, Feckin' eejits, Music that sucks, Radio | 16 Comments »

San Luis

October 17, 2018

Apropos of nothing in particular we have this lovely Andy Mann video in which the country around the Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve serves as the stage for “San Luis,” by Gregory Alan Isakov.

I stumbled upon this at NPR’s “World Cafe” while clambering down various rabbit holes, hoping to escape the wind.

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Posted in Arts & letters, Music that doesn't suck, Radio | 7 Comments »

Souvenir

March 12, 2018

John Prine backed by Jason Wilber, David Jacques and Kenneth Blevins.

Thanks to Pat for passing this along: John Prine performing an NPR Tiny Desk concert for us.

The 15-minute set includes a couple new tunes from “The Tree of Forgiveness,” which is due out next month, and a couple oldies, one of them from those long-gone days when I still had hair on my head and not much on my mind.

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Posted in Music that doesn't suck | 6 Comments »

The news just repeats itself

August 19, 2016

Now and then I miss working in a newsroom. This is not one of those times.

Most days, daily journalism is like any other gig, only more so. Hours of tedium interrupted by moments of pandemonium.

But news in the era of what Charlie Pierce calls He, Trump, is a whole other ballgame. It’s like trying to sip delicately from a fire hose hooked to a septic tank. It can’t be done, and nobody should have to try, not even for money.

And certainly not for free.

Instead I’ve been trying — and mostly succeeding — in paying attention to the bicycle, may God save her and all who sail in her.

There’s Bicycle Retailer‘s big 25th-anniversary celebration, for example. I need to dash off a column and cartoon on that topic, which shouldn’t be too much of a stretch, seeing as I’ve had 25 years of practice.

And I’ve ridden four different bikes in four days — Sam Hillborne, Steelman Eurocross, Soma Saga, Jones Steel Diamond — and loved every minute of it. Well, not every minute — the Steelman’s low end of 36×26 is a tad tall on steep, sandy single-track for an auld fella — but still, it beats perching in front of the Mac, letting the shit monsoon wash over me.

This morning I got up, grabbed some coffee, and when Herself went out to walk The Boo, I shut off NPR’s “Morning Edition” and started playing some John Prine instead. Sometimes a fella needs a little country to restore his faith in a bigger one.

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Posted in Arts & letters, Journalism, Music that doesn't suck | 27 Comments »

Chaos theory

August 14, 2013

“Out of order, chaos.”

That phrase rumbling through my skull woke me up way too early this morning. Naturally, I thought it a bit of profundity, the Universe addressing me while I slept.

“Remember this,” I instructed myself, and went back to sleep.

I remembered. And this morning the first thing I did (after getting coffee, of course) was to give a good hard twist on Mr. Google’s decoder ring, hoping to find out what the hell the Universe was talking about.

Well, it appears that the Universe was having me on, as usual. Seems my snoozing cerebrum had managed to flip a quote from an NPR story I heard yesterday about one of two female Type 1 incident wildfire commanders, the first to attain that lofty rank.

“Think of us as 911,” Jeanne Pincha-Tulley said. “We’re really good at taking chaos and making order out of it. We’re used to taking complicated and making it work.”

Leave it to a so-called journalist to (a) get the quote wrong, and (2) come down squarely on the side of chaos over order.

• Editor’s note: This is my 1,200th post on this free WordPress blog, which in a dreamscape ruled by chaos means absolutely nothing.

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Posted in Fire, I knew only confusion, Journalism, Stupidity | 29 Comments »

Keep it simple, stupid

August 6, 2010
Spice is nice.

Spice is nice.

It’s gonna be a long, fat winter if I’m already searching out new recipes in the first week of August. Step away from the skillet, lard-ass, drop the spatula, and keep your hands where I can see ’em.

Yesterday I test-drove a Kung Pao chicken recipe from NPR and it turned out pretty damn’ good for a first attempt, though stir-frying on a glass-top electric stove is far from ideal. Plus it gave me a chance to go shopping for stuff I don’t ordinarily have on hand, like Sichuan chiles, Sichuan peppercorns, rice wine, Chinkiang vinegar and what have you.

You might think a guy would have a tough time finding anything other than wafers and wine in Bibleburg. But we have a bunch of military types here, many of them wed to Asians, and thus there is no shortage of Asian grocery stores — among them the excellent Asian Pacific Market, housed in what once was the old Ampex headquarters off Highway 24. The chiles and peppercorns I got downtown at Savory Spice Shop, which is a place I’d like to run through someday with a wheelbarrow and someone else’s credit card.

Like many stir-fries, Kung Pao chicken is a simple dish, and I appreciate simplicity. It’s not always fun to spend hours in the kitchen for 15 minutes of eating. So here’s another easy one, from Martha Rose Shulman at The New York Times — a spinach omelet with Parmesan that she calls “the perfect one-dish meal.”

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Posted in Cookery | 14 Comments »