Back when I was a regular listener of NPR, I used to really enjoy the news quiz show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me…”. In fact, I almost got to be one of the call-in contestants on the show one time; I submitted my name and got a call from the producer who sets up the calls, but I wasn’t able to be available during their taping that week, and there was no chance to be rescheduled for a different week. Oh,well.
A couple of years after that let-down, our paths crossed again when the show came to Boston to do a live production of an episode. It was held in some auditorium at Boston University, since the local NPR station WBUR is still somewhat affiliated with the school, and the place was packed. People tend to think of NPR as being sort of a niche thing that’s only listened to by a few people, but whenver we’ve attended a live taping of a public radio program (and we’ve been to a number of them), there’s always a big crowd. I’ll grant you that in a place like Boston there’s probably a higher perecentage of radio listeners who tune in to NPR than some other more typical American metropolis, but still…Anyway, that evening was a lot of fun. Carl Kasell was there in person (he usually does his part in the show from Washington), and they had the Car Talk Guys as their special guests. In between taping segments of the show, Peter Sagal, the host, talked about his years in Boston as a Harvard student and about working at a neighborhood grocery in Cambridge that his aunt and uncle used to own. They were much more interactive with the crowd than the “This American Life” cast were when we saw them a couple of years after that.
Yesterday, linky-blog Mental Floss had an interview with Peter Sagal, wherein he talks about how he got the hosting job and how they put the show together each week. He’s also apparently plugging a new book he’s written, although it seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the radio show…PLUS he tells the story of how he is responsible for that paragon of cinematic excellence, “Dirty Dancing 2″.
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
