Keep in mind that the main thrust of the OP is to decry Keillor’s getting in my face via Writer’s Almanac and his articles on Salon. I don’t listen to NPR on the weekends, so it’s out of sight, out of mind at that time.
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Especially in regard to writer’s almanac, it’s a pendantic but fully intrusion during serious programming time. It really is an abomination, and I feel that that alone justifies my rancor.
Your point is crap, however: People can rant about what they think is crap. I’m casting a loud and angry vote against Keillor here, and if others wish to cast theirs in favor of him, that’s fine too. Free speech ‘n’ all that.
Non sequitur. Critics don’t have to be authors, and few are. And one doesn’t have to be board-certified critic in order to blast bullshit and incompetence.
OK, we’re same-paging here: Keillor sucks.
I hate to see suckage become popular. It’s an injustice.
I think the problem is content and attitude, not basic writing competence.
Actually, I didn’t say that the program needed improvement; it should be taken off the air completely or at least positioned among other fluff.
Stern is garbage sold as garbage. Keillor is garbage sold as folksy wisdom and literary knowledge. The latter fucks with my listening pleasure, hence my complaint.
But if you want to rip Stern from the airwaves, no argument from me; he is, after all, pure cretinous trash.
I suspect I’m on the younger edge of the PHC demographic too, at 21.
I like the show, I like his books (he’s written about 10 novels, the ones I’ve read are good). I saw him in person when he did a show at my college. Basically it was just him standing there for a couple hours rambling (Aeschines’s hell), but it was interesting hearing something new, hearing him react and respond to the audience. I got to talk with him for a minute after the show (he did a book signing) and he talked to me about college and encouraged me to keep up with the journalism (“It’ll never let you down,” he said, which I doubt, but we’ll see).
I catch the show when I’m not busy, and it makes good background noise (they archive the complete shows on their Web site). The books are fun reads that make me feel like writing. That’s about as far as it goes.
Well, FWIW, my friends in their 20s and 30s tend to listen to This American Life (a group went to see this show live), Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Only a Game, Car Talk, BBC News Hour (or whatever it’s called), and Morning Edition.
We do agree that PHC and Whaddaya Know both need to be taken out and shot.
And a lone voice in the wilderness says, hey, I like PHC, where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
AMEN! I got to go to a live taping of Says You! here in Seattle. I smiled for 2 hours straight. If you can ever, ever get to one, do go. The stuff that doesn’t make it to air is just priceless…naughty, but priceless. If I could get to Wait, Wait, then my life would be full. Ira Glass is coming in the Spring and I am hinting like hell for tickets.
I have also seen PHC live as well, which was good, but there was wine involved. I could still hear his nose whistling though.
Hey, was the show you went to broadcast recently? Loads of laughs! I always wonder how the audience can manage to restrain themselves sometimes (assuming they do). If I had a nickel for every time I’ve shouted an answer at the radio I could underwrite an episode or two myself.
I disagree with you on many points, but this is one you have spot on. People here often come into ranting threads to repeat the tired old, “If you don’t like it, don’t listen/read/watch it.” You still have a perfect right to rant about crap, and if you do it well then I like to read about it here.
You also get extra bonus points for ranting about something that you feel brings down the overall quality of something you enjoy, NPR.
I do, however, disagree with you about Keillor. He is getting old and much of his stuff is no longer so original, but I will specifically defend Writer’s Almanac. I think you are approaching it from the wrong direction. I have dated many a writer, and they invariably love the show. They call it a cure for writer’s block, and that is how I generally think of it. It is a collection of oddities to give you new and different ways of looking at things, real life excerpts from respected authors to make them seem more real and human, and a poem to cap it off. He seems to be saying, here are these wonderful things that were written by real people who had real problems, and you can do it too. I think you may just not be the intended audience.
After all that, I have to agree that Whadda’ Ya Know and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me suck ass.
Yes it was! They taped 4 episodes here in Seattle and they were so much fun. Lots of talking with the crowd and such and bawdy references which were cut out. The panel also did a good 1/2 hour question and answer session with the audience, which I thought was so nice of them to do.
The taping for each was over an hour per episode so whomever edits those recordings is a genious! FYI: You can buy individual episodes at audible.com.
Trivia I learned…
Richard Sher, who my husband is convinced is Christopher Meloni dad :rolleyes: , does know the definitions of the mystery word…not just the panelist who gets the card.
He chose Pipet and Finch (the “corporate name”) from a book of birds…literally, he flipped pages and pointed his finger.
He and the majority of the panelists would play this game as a parlor activity well before the radio show. Imagine those nights. :jealous:
It’s rational and based on his public performances. It’s directed toward his public presence.
Please read the posts before commenting. I did give a “reasoned critique” of Writer’s Almanac and the Salon columns. I don’t listen to PHC.
Howard Stern has entertained millions for over a decade; would it be “childish” and “beneath contempt” to call him a worthless vulgarian? Hardly.
I’ve stated, numerous times now, that NPR does excellent news and shitty entertainment. My advice to them is to replace the entertainment with more newsy stuff.
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As I said in my last post, I won’t stand up and defend The Writer’s Almanac, but I get the sense that even if Keillor read the kind of poetry you like, you wouldn’t be satisfied. Something else seems to be going on here.**Yes, something else is going on, and I wrote about it in a post up the thread. Feel free to read, then respond.
And they deserved to be slammed for it. But the deeper point is that Keillor’s pomposity and asininity comes through in his work itself; others here have gone on to confirm that he’s a dickhead IRL.
Then your taste is showing.
No shit! Read again my critique of “Writer’s Almanac,” which invades my weekday mornings.
Ira Glass. What is it I don’t get about Ira Glass and This American Life? Why does everybody on the show talk in exactly the same fast uninflected monotone, ie: Just Like Ira? Do they all hang out in the same clubs or something, or is Ira just coaching them to sound as blasé and worldly and hip as possible?
Yes, I’ve listened to the show, and my interest has often been held by it. But the presentation just seems so…so mannered.
When Garrison Keillor is travelling around the country doing shows, he often travels with musicians and their spouses. When the group gathers at night to pass the time, Keillor is the quiet one. Mostly he just watches and absorbs. You would think he wasn’t paying that much attention, but at the next performances the bits and pieces of conversation and stories are transformed into funny commentary in his show. He is still amazingly gifted.
You couldn’t have chosen a more appealing metaphor even though it’s not entirely appropriate. (I told my husband when we were newlyweds that I looked forward to being “old shoes” together.) Yes, the style of Keillor’s humor is very comfortable and dependable for me.
But A Prarie Home Companion still manages to introduce me to talent that I might not know otherwise. Just recently I heard Kaki King play the guitar for the first time because of his show and I am hooked!
So your opinion of him as an “egotistical, self-centered asshole” is based on
the sound of his voice
a daily five minute radio Almanac and poetry reading
a popular advice column at Salon that ended a few years back
…and is not based on the accomplishment for which he is most well-known and with which you are essentially unfamiliar?
I suppose it’s possible that everything you say about Keillor is true, but how the hell would you know? You haven’t scratched the surface.
It seems to me that critics of Keillor’s shows have to realize that there is a bunch of people out in the darkness who came of age in small farm towns in the happy days before John Kennedy’s head was blown off who really enjoy the man’s humor and low key wit. Admittedly we got the Hell out of those small farm towns just as fast as we could get ourselves into a cheap state university but the PHC show is a bit of a connection to our youth. Whenever he points out that in Lake Woebegone the Lutherans drive Fords and the Catholics drive Chevies (or vise-verse) we smile because that is the way it was in our hometown. When he does his detective bit we remember the radio private eyes of our childhood and we smile. Maybe you need some sort of cultural connection to a world that ended during the Johnson Administration to like the show. Maybe you have to think that Howard Stern is a boob and that humor based on language that some of us didn’t hear until we lived in a barracks is not all that amusing. Maybe not.
The Writer’s Almanac is broadcast around here at 5:30 in the morning. I don’t catch it very often. When I do hear it, it seems moderately entertaining and informative – like having an uncle who is a retired English professor at some freshwater college. It’s only five minutes and can’t be nearly as annoying as even five seconds of the blather that passes for entertainment on the drive-time radio shows.
I suppose, Aeschines, that everyone is entitled to have an opinion on any subject but your’s is one I can’t agree with.
I came in to agree that while I enjoyed Praire Home Companion back in the 1980’s. It has worn thin for me too. For those who deride Howard Stern (and I’m one of them) one of the reasons that I think Garrison is not as funny anymore is that it seems that after his divorce his writing got cruder and alot more sex andd bathroom jokes started to appear on the show. Nothing wrong with a good joke about anything but these days he just seems to sound like every sitcom on TV. Which I regret, I remember buying several of his albums and tapes and I miss the wholesome old-time radio humor that I enjoyed.
What’s amusing is that I still love Car-Talk, Whad’ya Know and most of the other shows mentioned.
Count me in the “can take him or leave him alone” crowd. Still I can definitely understand the ire of someone tuning into the local publicly supported classic music station, desiring and expecting, naturally enough to hear classical music, instead being offered two hours of homespun folksiness.
