A Few of My Audio Favorites
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I enjoy programs like All Things Considered, Morning Edition and other news and entertainment features from National Public Radio. One reason I particularly enjoy those shows' web sites is the fact that they provide links to the individual stories and features which one can in turn share with his friends. So that's what I intend to do on this page.
It should go without saying that following these links requires that you have ReadAudio installed and functioning on your computer, but as you can see I felt a need to say it anyway.
To kick off this tour of my favorites, the first link is from the All Things Considered program of December 30th, 1999. Recall, if you will, that as New Year's Eve approached that year, there was considerable hype and concern about what was known as the "Y2K bug." The following lighthearted retrospective of the millennium exemplifies one reason I enjoy cabaret theatre as much as I do.
The paragraph that follows is the description of this segment provided by NPR in their archive of this program. (The numbers in parenthesis at the end of this and other such paragraphs indicate the playing time of the audio clip.)
The Reduced Shakespeare company presents a brief re-enactment of the last thousand years, taking some... ahem... artistic liberties. The actors -- Austin Tichenor, Reed Martin and Dee Ryan -- can currently be seen on stage performing The Complete Millenium Musical (abridged) at the Seattle Repertory Company. (12:30)
In a somewhat different vein, this next link is an interview of Snuffy Walden, fascinating to me both because it is about how someone writes music and because I happen to like both the music and the TV show with which the music is associated -- The West Wing.
W.G. Snuffy Walden's new CD is called music by.... It's a collection of themes and incidental music that he's written for television. Walden's music has appeared on Felicity, Rosanne, Once and Again and Thirtysomething. His latest score is the theme to NBC's The West Wing. Noah Adams talks with Walden about how he writes music for TV and the concept behind the West Wing theme. (7:30)
And next comes an even more different clip, an obituary of Edward Gorey.
Artist and author Edward St. John Gorey died Saturday. He was known for his cross-hatched line drawings of comically macabre and often bizarre subjects. He wrote over 100 books, and illustrated over 60 others, by authors from Edward Lear to Samuel Beckett. He was also a scenic designer for the theatre. His design work included Broadway's Dracula in 1977. Noah speaks with Andreas Brown, owner or the Gotham Book Mart in New York, who was a friend Gorey's, and exhibited some of his work. (6:00)
"Prediction is difficult, especially about the future." -- Yogi Berra . . . or was it he who said it after all?
Can you believe the "facts" you find on the Internet? NPR's David Kestenbaum discovered--the hard way--that the gatekeepers who made sure printed sources like Bartlett's Quotations get it right are not necessarily part of the Internet culture. The experts' advice for 'net surfers? Caveat emptor. (4:30)
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