Earbud Monday: Why I can’t watch bad movies alone November 9, 2009

There is a thing I’ve been waiting to see for myself, and I finally saw it over the weekend. About a year ago, Entertainment Weekly did a huge story about a little-known cult film called “The Room,” produced, written and directed by an unknown guy in Hollywood, who, by the way, also plays the main character. Not that exceptional in Southern California, I suppose, but the reason this little movie started getting attention is the unknown director, actor, writer and producer, Tommy Wiseau, put up a couple of pretty cryptic billboards promoting the movie around Los Angeles, complete with his giant, sleepy-looking mug. A few people went to see the movie, and word of mouth spread from there. Now, “The Room” is a huge inside joke among LA’s hipster comedy crowd, according to EW. Wiseau apparently got wind of everyone’s ironic embrace of his unintentionally hilarious melodrama of a film, because the trailers now beg you to “see this new, black comedy.”

“The Room” finally came out on DVD in the last week or so, and I’m always up for a great bad movie. After not one, not two, but FOUR gratuitous sex scenes (two of them prominently featuring Wiseau’s own aerobicized backside), 18 speeches about off-camera events, 85 non-sequiters and a host of continuity issues, I not only wasn’t laughing ironically but I just wanted to pour Clorox in my eyes and ears. I get why it’s funny. I still want that hour and a half of my life back.

At first I thought there was something wrong with me. Had I lost the ability to appreciate a great bad movie? Hadn’t I spent the better part of my 20s watching reruns of the smack talking Mystery Science Theater 3000? Do I not heart Rifftrax with all of my, um, heart?

All these worries were put to rest by a little interview from Friday on Too Beautiful to Live. Grateful for a fresh TBTL to listen to at 3 a.m. instead of the voices in my head, I rested my melon with a good 40 minutes of Luke. On Friday’s show, he interviewed a couple of friends who host a podcast called Stack of Dimes, in which terrible movies get lovingly mocked and shredded. They were talking about something completely different, a ninja movie from 1985. I would never go out of my way to rent a movie like that just for the kitsch value, however I thoroughly enjoyed their skewering of it.

That’s when I realized my problem. I had no one riffing on “The Room” with me. Yeah, the Husband was at home, but not really engaged in the moment. (Can you blame him?) If I watch a bad movie without the benefit of the MST3K guys, I need a couple of really witty friends with whom to banter at the same time. Or at least, I need to talk about it with someone. For now, I’ll be checking out the Stack of Dimes podcast and posting a review sometime soon. It’s the best I can do to fill the smack talk void.

So here’s the deal. Anyone who has watched this turkey of a film, please leave a comment. I need to know you’re out there, and that this is not just a cosmic joke on me, perpetrated by the writers of Entertainment Weekly.

Quickly, before I go get the Clorox.

Earbud Monday: A reviewer finally agrees with me about Mad Men October 5, 2009

It might be the greatest all time opening credits introducing the world’s most over-praised television show.

What’s right with the opening sequence is basically the same thing that’s right with the show itself: the concept, the design, and the music.

I could watch this thing again and again and again and not get bored.

And you know this thing by itself has reached a level of greatness when it’s parodied by the smarties behind The Simpsons.

Last week on Fresh Air, critic John Powers put into words something I’ve been inarticulately stewing about every time a friend asks me how much I’m loving Mad Men. You would think I would love it with the same ardor I give to Glee, or Lost. The show is designed to appeal to someone like me, who drools over the design and shape of old mechanical typewriters but who has never actually used one, and who has no plans to start using one anytime soon, and who might prefer instead to wear bracelets made from repurposed typewriter keys.

Powers is a bit kinder than I am; he says it’s in that special category of shows which drive him crazy, but keep him watching. But he says the exact truth that’s been eluding me : “Mad Men goes out of its way to flaunt its importance.” That’s so right on. The show is in love with itself, and most of the reviewers in the media, and most of my friends, have followed suit.

When I Netflixed the first disc of season 1 last summer, I noticed all the things I was supposed to notice. The hair. The makeup. The clothes. The cars. The set pieces, including, of course, those amazing typewriters. Everything was perfect, down to the acting and the well-written snappy dialogue. As Powers says, “It all but laminates your eyeballs with its style.”

But all the shiny, pretty things couldn’t excuse how freaking disappointed I was in the characters. I can’t root for a single one of them. Least of all the revered Don Draper, who has it all — respect and admiration of all his coworkers, adoring wife, cherubic children, sweet suburban house in Connecticut — but is utterly miserable, and uses that misery as an excuse to be a big fat cheater. Then we have the opposite extreme of good-girl Peggy, who gives in to the advances of the very drunk ad exec Pete Campbell, on his first try. I believe this was the night before his wedding. Peggy, what is wrong with you? I just did not buy it for a second. Oh, and then there’s the stylized bad stuff about the 1960s: racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, littering, smoking while pregnant, and letting your child play with plastic dry-cleaning bags over his head. This stuff is so easy spot, it’s like a drinking game that could be titled “Drink Every Time You See Something That Makes You Feel Superior in 2009.”

It took me a few episodes to catch on to the fact that behind all the shiny 1960s set pieces, the show just made me sad. There’s enough sad going around right now; I don’t need to contemplate why people in 1960 were also sad.

I appreciate the historical significance, but I don’t want to devote that much time to it. Just as old typewriters are pretty to look at, but I don’t plan on using one. I just don’t see the point.

Earbud Monday: Ira Glass on TBTL September 21, 2009

Or maybe I should call it Everything that Rises Must Converge.

Or, Ultimate Dinner Party Guest Pu-Pu Platter.

Or, My Two Favorite Podcasts Combine And My Head Explodes.

Or, Too Beautiful to Be This American Life.

Or, When A Radio Show Gets Ess-Canned and Turned Into a Podcast Only, It  Makes the Web Stats Blow Up and Land it on the Front Page of iTunes.

So my daily dog-walking energy drink known as Too Beautiful to Live went all prophecy-fulfilling last week. The nightly talk radio show on a station I’d never tuned in to, from a city I’ve never visited, yet which I can’t get through a day without hearing, got yanked from the airwaves. But never fear: Luke, Jen and Sean are still out there reporting on the daily news of what’s Awesome/Not Awesome (And thank you Kanye for giving that little gift to Monday’s show), only in an entirely podcast format now.

I don’t know anything about fancy audio equipment, so I feel confident in telling you it sounds exactly the same to me, and maybe even a little better. Not as many breaks for commercials and news about Dumpster fires, as they like to point out. I am a little concerned that they might have left a few of their adopted children behind, as it’s been a while since we heard from Fran, Curtis “Li’l Bacon” TinySuitcase, and Hot Cheetos Girl. But we’ve been assured that Hot Greg is indeed coming back with more public-telephone movie reviews. Although now that they’re recording from Luke’s living room, it would be the perfect opportunity to invite HG into the studio for a proper visit. That would be audio gold, Luke’s eventual concerns over HG finding out where he lives notwithstanding.

Speaking of audio gold, our fearsome threesome ended their first week as a podcast-only show by bringing out the big guns, if by “big guns” I mean everyone’s favorite unassuming public radio host in vintage black-framed specs, Ira Glass of This American Life. Just to give you a taste of all the rewards you will reap by downloading this show, here is a list of what you will get:

A tutorial on how men suck at yoga, including Wearing the Wrong Pants,

A moment when you realize Luke is describing his bowel movements to Ira Glass, and it’s not for the purposes of a clever This American Life story about how Americans have come to enjoy talking about bowel movements like it’s not a private concern anymore,

A few fun facts about how many rabbits it takes to feed a pancreatitic pit bull.

Even better news for you: when you listen to this via your earbuds, you won’t be listening along in the car with your significant other, who, when learning that Ira has a special gene that means he has to get yearly mammograms to watch out for breast cancer, starts grousing out loud about the increased chances of breast cancer due to all the X-rays, and you won’t have to give your beloved the angry librarian gesture that says IRA IS TALKING.

Enjoy.

Earbud Monday: Croncast September 14, 2009

It’s like watching the evolution of a marriage in real time.

I may not have all the facts right, or in the correct order here, but I’ll give it a shot: Once upon a time, Kris and Betsy were poor newlyweds moving into an apartment with some not-so-mysterious blood stains on the carpet and Kris earned money by making gas-station pizza. Then one day they moved to Milwaukee, where Betsy learned to love playing Bingo with old people and Kris managed a shoe store where, unbeknownst to him, his employees were doing some black market business out the back door. Somewhere along the way, they learned how to properly abandon a broken down car without it getting traced back to them. Eventually, babies happened, and so did a move to Naperville, where the schools and doctors were better and Betsy worked with at-risk kids while pushing Kris up the career ladder. Then they set up a studio in the basement, nicknamed the Man Pit, where Kris ran a fairly successful business producing commercial podcasts for other people, and some other  computery things I don’t fully understand. Betsy became a champion e-bay seller, scrubber of used plush toys, a ninja-stealthy dumpster diver, a wrangler of fancy dish settings in the face of pushy Russian customers at Goodwill, while at the same time moving up the ranks in improv comedy classes and taking some unbelievable cross-country trips with her friend Jeanie. Various other sagas figure here, too, involving pets, children, mothers, Napervillians, and childhood memories of traumatic RV drives to Alaska (Betsy) and getting hit by a truck while riding a bike at age five (Kris).

I’ve been 100 percent hooked on Croncast and even listening to old episodes never disappoints. (If I have piqued your interest, hit up the “archive” button at the top of the main page of their website. Look for the ep from Feb. 11, 2005, about Betsy’s Alaska trip with her dad. Download, sit back and enjoy the crazy.) The first day I heard them, back in 2004, it was the Chicagoland accents that I clung to. Living in Texas has its charms but sometimes a Midwestern girl needs some of those harsh vowel sounds, accompanied by no small dose of cutting humor.

After a long hiatus over the summer, which saw them moving from Naperville, IL, to New York, NY, they’re finally back online and no doubt have a backlog of stories to share. Kris and Betsy have been through a lot lately. But then, they’ve always been going through something. They’ve never had it easy — and when they did, they learned how quickly an easier life can slip away from you. The two of them have a favorite slogan: “Life is show prep.” Of course that’s true for any of us with a homegrown blog or podcast. What else to we have to write and to talk about except our lives? These two, though, have show prep in spades.

As a devoted fan I once thought it was the best podcast with the worst name, and I believe somewhere along the way I’ve heard one of the illustrious co-hosts use a similar description. They did at one time experiment with a new name and a new format, but that didn’t last long. Somehow they’re just Croncast, and they’ll always be Croncast. Whatever that means. In my mind, it’s down to word association. It sort of sounds like Cronkite. I like that. Similar to the legendary CBS news man, Kris and Betsy are like trusted friends I’ve never met. No matter how crappy things get, I can be comforted that they’ve been through something similar, or worse.

They may not always be kid-friendly in their language, and they’re sometimes not safe for work. But that’s life. Life is messy. Marriage and family are messy. The overall thing that keeps me coming back is knowing that for every couple like Kris and Betsy out there, there are about a thousand marriages that didn’t last. Heck, I can think of five friends’ marriages that broke up over lesser struggles than the ones these two have survived.

But here’s the thing. They haven’t just survived. They just keep getting stronger. Kris may give Betsy a hard time about her tendency to exaggerate a story, and Betsy might mock Kris and his “man boobs” from time to time. But underneath, there is a bond of true companionship and love and affection. It seems to me that their best qualities as partners have only gotten stronger as they weather the worst of life’s storms.

One side effect of this is they’re raising two incredible and intelligent kids along the way, who will one day thank their mom and dad for setting an example of what marriage is supposed to be: It’s not just romance and house-hunting and PTA meetings and garage sales. Sometimes there’s blood on the carpet, and you just have to laugh about it.

Earbud Monday: The Moth August 31, 2009

I’m astonished at the bravery of the young, sometimes. I never felt that more than when listening to the most recent podcast from The Moth. The very idea of getting up in front of a live audience and telling a story is terrifying, but as a writer, my only excuse for not doing it is I don’t live near a city that hosts live Moth events.

This week’s The Moth features a story by a young man from Brooklyn named Terrence Buckner, who participated in The Mothshop Community Program, a storytelling workshop for students and young people. Although it’s only audio, I can see Terrence up there on stage. He’s raw, unrehearsed, his speech is full of “like”s and “um, so”s. And yet he might be the most articulate example of how a person who identifies as gay is not necessarily choosing a lifestyle, and how that identity has very little to do with sex. He’s just a teenager, trying to get through school without getting beat up. At the same time, he’s tired of forcing himself into a certain mold, a mold that includes baggy jeans and tee shirts and whatever else at his school qualifies as inherently heterosexual. He just wants to be real, to his mom, to his friends, to his obnoxious brother. He wants to get rid of the baggy jeans and wear his skinny jeans.

Some gays and lesbians wait until after high school to come out of the closet. Understandably so. In some communities, it’s the difference between life and death. In some cases, a kid knows Mom and Dad will not just kick them out of the house, but promptly yank all that handy college financial support if a kid dares bring home a date of the same gender. Others just don’t know what could happen, so they carefully wait it out until they can move somewhere more comfortable as an adult. Terrence is a pretty special kid. I would like to think that a big high school in a big place like New York would naturally have a student population with a more cosmopolitan attitude about the gay teenagers that walk its halls. Apparently Terrence’s neighborhood school, or at least the one he attended at the time of his coming out, wasn’t so ready for Terrence.

But then, something amazing happens. They get over it. Everyone moves on. Before Terrence came out, the issue was so much bigger in his own head. Then he told his Mom, who said, “You know I’ll love you no matter what.” And then it’s no longer such a big deal. It was enough to help him decide to wear his skinny jeans to school and to face the bullies and the derision. But the bullies got put in their place in a very unexpected way. And the rest of the kids got over it, almost by the very next day. And then it seemed a non-issue.

If only all the misfit kids out there had a mom, friends and a brother like Terrence. If only we as a society could just get over it already.

Earbud Monday: prison and politics August 17, 2009

The best podcasts of the past week had surprisingly little to do with pop culture and very much to do with people on the outermost margins of our culture: prisoners.

The motif was purely coincidental. Last Monday, Dave Davies on Fresh Air interviewed film director John Waters about his new book, which includes an argument in favor of the release of Leslie Van Houten. Waters is always a fantastic interview subject, and in that way I’m a fan. As far as his films go, I’m a lightweight. I loved the original “Hairspray,” (kids, that’s the one with Divine, not Travolta) and “Cry-Baby” (before Johnny Depp was Johnny Depp). I’m pretty sure I couldn’t stomach his more outrageous stuff, like Pink Flamingos or Polyester, and thanks to Waters’ own interviews I’ve been fairly warned to stay away. Still I appreciate his mind, his wit, his pencil-thin mustache that you can see coming through the radio.

Leslie Van Houten was one of the Manson girls, and was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the LaBianca murders. She’s been in prison in California longer than any other woman currently inside. I can’t say I agree with Waters, who has regularly been visiting her in prison for more than 20 years now. But it’s a completely spellbinding interview. I’m pretty sure I walked the dog for at least 20 minutes longer than necessary just so I could keep listening straight through. I wasn’t alive when the Manson murders took place, so I don’t have the historical perspective of somebody my parents’ age, who most likely watched the horrors unfold on the evening news. And I certainly don’t feel it’s my place to weigh in, because, to my mind, nobody’s opinion matters more than that of the families of the victims. She’s guilty and she knows it. She and her fellow Manson disciples entered a home in Los Feliz, California where Van Houten held down Rosemary LaBianca while one of the other Manson sisters tried to stab the woman to death. The girls botched the job and their “brother” Tex Watson finally stepped in and finished the deed. Unlike Manson, though, Van Houten is utterly remorseful, and does not appreciate the notoriety. Manson is described as a pathetic, disgusting old man and not all that interesting. Van Houten, however, has earned every degree a person can earn in prison, held every job, taught classes and lives every day with her guilt. The most compelling moment of the interview was when Waters described Van Houten’s response to being recognized. “She’s never signed an autograph, she finds it incredibly painful. I’ve seen that in the visiting room, people say ‘Can I have your autograph?’ I can see the pain in her face when people ask that.”

Later in the week, Fresh Air did a heartwarming interview with the founder of Puppies Behind Bars, a program that uses prisoners to help train service dogs to sniff for bombs or to aid people with disabilities. The PBB has a side project called Dog Tags, which provides specially trained service dogs to war veterans with injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. The program has matched up about 500 dogs to date, and currently puts prisoners to work in six correctional facilities. The role of a service dog in the life of a veteran with visible physical injuries seems obvious. But the really touching part of the story was about dogs trained to help out with soldiers who come home with the less visible injuries, the kind of mental anguish that causes a panic attack in the middle of a grocery store. With a simple command like “find the car,” these dogs can take charge and instantly lead their masters back to the car, preventing a public episode. If a soldier is alone at home and suddenly becomes unresponsive for whatever reason, one of these dogs can literally pick up a special phone to dial 9-1-1. Helping prisoners rehabilitate themselves by helping others … I can’t think of anything that puts more good karma out there. Oh wait, yes I can. Here’s more info and a link to donate.

Earbud Monday: Jawbone Radio August 10, 2009

Is it possible to be hip and mostly family-friendly at the same time? It’s not easy, but somehow Len and Nora of Cleveland, Ohio, do it almost every week on Jawbone Radio.

Ever since 2004, Jawbone has been one of the high-quality “living room” podcasts I can’t live without for more than a week, and they’re not even getting help from a handy, non-threatening pamphlet from their bosses on how to keep everyone from getting fined by the FCC. That’s because they don’t have bosses, unless you count their five adorable and hilarious kids, who show up just seldom enough to prevent the show from morphing into yet another mommy podcast about diapers and strollers.

I have no idea why, but the show sort of makes my husband’s face go blank. I don’t know what it is he finds so offputting — the sound effects, the fan-created music bumps, or Len’s self-effacing jokes that sometimes leave me gasping for breath and dabbing the corners of my eyes. One particular episode about competitive eating and a harrowing descent downstairs from a year or two ago was a prime example of this. Here’s the link if you’re interested. I listened all the way through and then replayed it for the husband during a car ride, and the fact that he barely smirked just made me clutch my stomach even more. Maybe it’s a case of guess-you-had-to-be-there.

One thing nobody can argue with is Nora’s articulate storytelling talent, her cutting dry wit and her ability to reign in Len when he might be getting too introspective, like when he worries too much about whether he dresses too young for his age. Nora’s life experience is always great show prep, as she somehow seems more prone than the rest of us to have run-ins with crazy rude people. On the one hand, I’m sorry that Nora has to deal with all the insufferables of the world. On the other hand, when I hear her gearing up for a good crazy run-in story, I’m all ears, as if I’m sitting down with a cup of coffee and saying to my virtual friend, “Tell me EVERYTHING.” She has a knack for the funny details of life, and nothing is funnier than Nora doing all the voices of all the crazies and the crabbies, who are all-too familiar.

If that weren’t enough, Len is also a hugely talented artist with a successful side business called Monster by Mail, in which he draws an original work of art for you based on your own made-up name for your villain or monster. His work has been seen in the 700 Hoboes project, Jonathan Coulton’s Visual Thing A Week, and too many more projects to name here.

Besides the storytelling, Jawbone has entertained me over the years by snagging a great deal of impressive interviews. From Mac commercial star John Hodgman, to Internet superstar Jonathan Coulton, to a handful of cast members from Mystery Science Theater 3000, to the guys who wrote that Pac-Man song, just to name a few. As the couple’s interviewing skills have improved exponentially with every interview, I would dare to rank these two right up there among anybody you might hear on the radio. Certainly better than any celebrity interviewers on TV, as Len and Nora keep the tone conversational, with enough humility to be clearly interested in what their subjects are saying — unlike people such as Larry King and Charlie Rose, who just can’t stop yammering or referring back to themselves.

Whether it’s a woeful tale of bad customer service, an unplanned and poignant interview with Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson’s mother, or Nora’s brother Neil, Jawbone brings on funny stories and interesting people, and just lets the stuff of life unfold organically. If only more busy parents realized there’s more to life than tales of injustice on the soccer field and dance recitals. They might find their friends will keep on listening.

Earbud Monday: not so hot in herre August 3, 2009

After more than a week of listening to my brave and damp heroes over at TBTL suffer the Great Seattle Sweat-a-Thon of 2009, it occurs to me how totally spoiled we’ve been here in the Midwest this summer, and of how completely spoiled I am.

Not to brag — mostly because I had very little to do with the weather — but it’s been mostly in the low to mid 80s in Fort Wayne all summer. I think I remember some days back in June that got up to the low 90s. Over the past few weeks, though, I don’t even feel like marching over to the pool here at my apartment complex. Which is a shame, because I love to swim. It’s certainly warm enough to swim, but it’s also breezy enough that I know I would be shivering to beat the band after one dip in the water. Besides that, my core temperature hasn’t elevated badly enough for me to lose my sense of modesty. In my old age, it’s got to be hot enough to make me say “screw it, I don’t care what I look like in a swimsuit.”

Still, if it did get that hot, even if I had no pool in my neighborhood, I’d still be fine. I, like TBTL co-host and producer Jen Andrews, enjoy making certain provisions for life-altering weather. I don’t have a stash of pre-cut limes for my beer. I do, however, have loads of Skinny Cow popsicles and pomegranate-flavored frozen treats in the freezer, lots of ice on hand for the dog dish and a back log of reliable red wine that tastes good chilled as a spritzer or served with fruit slush. I have a box fan for the big window, and a great little double-fan thingy that fits in the bedroom window, perfect for people like me who can’t sleep unless we can feel air flowing and all conditions are perfect. And I have my balcony with my camping chairs and cupholders, where I can roll up my pant legs and sun myself in true hillbilly fashion. Unlike long-time producer and native Seattle-ite Jen Andrews, though, I have air conditioning. Most people in Seattle do not. I did not know this.

Nowhere in the world are people more spoiled by air conditioning than down in Texas. I know this because I lived there for about seven years. I never grew acclimated to the heat, because everywhere you go is air conditioned. Not just a little bit. A lot. I know plenty of homeowners and businesses that keep their thermostats set on 68 degrees from April Fool’s Day until Halloween. It was truly ridiculous. One place that was never air conditioned was the yarn shop, one of my favorite haunts on the downtown square of my Texas town. Located in a huge, three-story cavern of a historic building, there was simply no way to make air conditioning work efficiently. And you know what, after a few minutes of sitting still with one’s knitting, talking about our husbands and sharing iced teas, it wasn’t all that bad.

The fact that hardly anyone has an air-conditioned home or apartment is actually part of the good news about the Seattle heat wave. Nobody’s running those darn things all day every day, so, unlike Southern California during the summer, there’s no black-outs, brown-outs, or otherwise sketchy situations going on at the power grids. The rest of us — at least those of us whose health is not compromised — could probably take a few lessons from the Seattle-ites and turn those things off, and just go outside. I know I should.

Earbud Monday July 27, 2009

Earlier this week I was walking the dog with my earbuds in, listening to an interview with film director Judd Apatow on Fresh Air, and I about fell off the sidewalk. Not because I was laughing, though he was very funny. But because I heard him say something that made me realize I wasn’t completely nuts.

Apatow was telling a story to Terry Gross about how he used to be Adam Sandler’s roommate way back when, and that Adam used to make Judd sit by his bed and talk to him to help him get to sleep. The talking helped calm him down and relax and drift off. I thought, “Well, that’s interesting. I always try that with my husband though it never works; he’s off to sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.”

Then Judd goes on to say that he now has the same problem.

Judd: “… I don’t want to listen to the voices in my head … I’ve slept much better since I found out I could put the ear bud in one ear, and not in the other ear, and then put that ear on the pillow, because it would hurt if I had the earbuds in both ears … I have to pick a Fresh Air with a topic that will help calm me down … if you’re talking Iraq War, I can’t go to sleep to that. But I can slowly over the course of an hour calm down to a combo show with, like, Bill Murray and Diane Keaton. It’ll make me happy and I’ll drift off. And then the next night I’ll start off from the point I fell asleep, and I’ll listen until the end.”

Me: “Oh. My. Gosh. So, it’s not just me?”

So now, because Judd Apatow and I both have separately addressed the exact same problem with the exact same solution in the very same way, I realize I’m not alone, and I’m not necessarily doing anything wrong by sleeping with my earbuds in.

These are the little bits of serendipity I point to whenever a well-meaning techno-phobe, such as my mother, goes on a diatribe about how technology and the Internet are driving us all apart, and keeping us all from communicating with each other in any real way. I strongly feel it’s the complete opposite for me. If anything, this technology has helped me realize just how similar we all are, and it’s comforting.

Way back in 2004, I think it was, I heard a story on NPR that helped me form this belief in a big way.

Weekend Edition did an interview with a young married couple in rural Wisconsin who liked to sit around in their living room, recording themselves talking, telling bathroom-humor jokes, telling stories about their every day lives, and posting these mp3 recordings on their website as a free download. These recordings had developed a huge following, so it was just a matter of time before the reporters assigned to “trend pieces” came knocking. Over the next few weeks other reporters for local newspapers and television stations picked up on the trend, and then discovered that lots of people in their own communities were doing the same thing, and that Wisconsin couple wasn’t necessarily the first, and they most certainly were not even close to being the best.

It seemed like a matter of minutes before someone coined the term “podcast” for these homemade internet “radio” shows. Then came the aggregators and the websites that helped you search for the best ones. I started downloading some of these to my iPod, and I was completely hooked. There were literally thousands of people in the U.S. alone who were producing these shows, many of them with sound quality equal to or better than a live radio program. Thanks to Garage Band, pretty much anybody can do a podcast. This phenomenon hit me right around the time that the husband and I were discussing satellite radio. And then, all of a sudden, it was “XM what?” and “Sirius Who?”

Literally, within two weeks of that NPR story, each of us had bookmarked at least 20 different FREE shows, each of them updated at least once a week or more. Neither of us had the time to listen to that much and keep up with everything, so what’s the point of paying for a commercial service? Eventually iTunes caught on, and for better or for worse, made all the podcast clearinghouse websites obsolete for iPod users.

Because I don’t yet have a DVR – what’s the point when you don’t have cable TV? – my iPod is my sole source of reliable, on-demand entertainment. Like those lucky people who can store up an entire season of Breaking Bad on their TV and have a late-night marathon if they so choose, I get not a small amount of joy in banking up my favorite podcasts when life gets busy.

A lot of those homegrown shows have held on, but the most popular shows on the iTunes podcast pages seem to be ones that are commercially or professionally produced. The best of these include the NPR shows like This American Life and Fresh Air, and my all-time favorite, Too Beautiful To Live, a live commercial radio talk show based in Seattle. My hours spent dog-walking have never been the same since I discovered TBTL, mostly because it means on any given day I might be that messy-haired lady at the park to whom you give a wide berth, because she appears to be belly laughing out loud for no apparent reason. Still, there are a handful of what I like to call the “living room” podcasts that I’ve been listening to since the very beginning, and if you’re a regular reader here, you’ll likely enjoy these too:
Jawbone Radio
Hometown Tales
Israelisms
Digital Detroit Radio
Croncast
The Bitterest Pill

And so, the plan here is to designate my little Monday space for a round up of the week’s best shows. Not necessarily reviews, but more like the highlights, the gems, the most mind-blowing bits of serendipity. Because they bring me so much joy, keep my dog exercised, and help me sleep at night, it’s the least I can do.