Lately I've been enjoying Bullseye with Jesse Thorn, it's an NPR culture show but not on any local station--I discovered it because the eponymous authoritative nerd host's connection with John Hodgman. Jesse is the bailiff on the Judge John Hodgman podcast, but more than that he runs the Maximum Fun podcast network, with 3 or 4 podcasts that I subscribe to and a dozen or more that I don't. Only so much time in the day.

Bullseye covers some stuff that you'd expect from an NPR interview show--soul legend Bill Withers, noir pioneer Elmore Leonard--but also is unexpectedly hip. Punk, metal, and "heavy" music are covered, as well as "alternative" comedians and cult cinema. Most interesting is Jesse Thorn's fluency with the world of hip hop. I've heard him interview several rappers. Prodigy of Mobb Deep was disarmed by Thorn's respectful well-researched questions, Big Boi of Outkast seemed downright grateful for his thoughtful treatment, but Bun B of UGK took issue with Thorn's interpretation of one of his songs. But Jesse came to the interview with an interpretation of the song! He comes to all his hip hop interviews with an understanding of the context and artistry of rap--I can't decide if this is a benefit or a detriment to the show's future success on NPR.

Jesse is currently off on paternity leave, and has had a slew of entertaining fill-ins. His best friend and sidekick (on the comedy podcast Jordon Jesse Go!) had fun with a couple episodes, discussing cult movie bomb/sensation "The Room" and the Bad Religion Christmas album. NPR’s sports guy Mike Pesca is a seasoned professional but his voice sounds like an index finger being jabbed into your chest. Award-winning author Susan Orlean has a radio voice like a sexy android. The New Yorker columnist surprised with an almost fawning interview of Jack Black. She also revealed her taste in the heavy music segment when she described one piece of electronic metal as sounding like "a washing machine with something loose in it."

If you are an NPR listener and want something less dry and dusty than the usual fare, definitely give Bullseye a chance.

In this snapshot from the weekend, Alexis rolls herself a cigarette after having planted veggie seeds in the starter pots. In the background, a broken picket in our fence gate taunts me.  But hey guess what we did last night?



We went to the taping of NPR's Ask Me Another! We've been excited about the show since Jonathan Coulton first announced that he was a part of it. I was very critical of it when it first started, but I've listened to every episode as a podcast. Part of my criticism had to do with host Ophira Eisenberg, (I just had to backwards anagram "her ripe begonias" to get close to spelling her name right) I didn't think she had good flow. But seeing her live was revelatory--she improvises very well, handles difficult guests with aplomb, and has polite but authoritative control of the stage.

Here she is preparing to interview Barney Frank, who got massive applause, especially when his work for gay rights was mentioned. He quipped that when he became a congressman in 1981 it was not acceptable to be a gay man in public life, but when he retired last year, his same sex marriage was respectable--but being a member of congress is very unpopular.

JoCo played "The Future Soon" as a full length warmup, a short version of "Brookline," and the first bit of the Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man" (after the Barney Frank segment).

From work:
Naval Jelly. Autolysing porpoise. Threadgill Chamber.*

and just now on NPR:
"The cusp of perpetual darkness"



*(I named the Threadgill chamber after a former coworker who showed me how to make it: It's a big plastic jar with a piece of stockinet on the top. It's for putting small birds in to weigh them. I think "Threadgill Chamber Ensemble" would be a good name, for example.)

Just heard a snippet of a Robert Krulwich piece on NPR that made me dash to the computer to check out the full story.

One of the guaranteed species on an Urban Nature Walk is the honey locust. It's a widely planted, pollution tolerant tree, with tiny leaflets that blow away in the fall requiring little clean-up. Most of the honey locusts found in cities are cultivated varieties that have done away with their two most interesting features. First, their huge seed pods, and second, their array of large sharp thorns:



I'd been walking around with the misapprehension that this tree was native to the hills south and west of here, but apparently that applies only to black locust.  Honey locust is considered native, and for the purposes of Krulwich's piece, was known to be growing on Manhattan Island 13,000 years ago.  Also on Manhattan at that time, were elephants, specifically mastodons.  Now for the honey locust tree to evolve these big, sharp, and expensive (from a biological point of view--that's a lot of energy to devote to a decoration) thorns, there had to be some animal that the tree wanted to deter.  I always assumed that the thorns were there to slow down raccoons and bears from climbing the tree to eat the seed pods before they were ready.  Krulwich proposes that the thorns, which come out of the bark of the trunk as well as the branches, evolved to keep some herbivore from stripping the bark.  He points out that the acacia tree of Africa, which famously still has elephants, bears similar thorns.  He also mentions that until someone studies mastodon droppings or coprolites and finds honey locust parts therein, there is no proof that mastodons ate from the honey locust.

Pretty cool.  Of course my contrary side would quickly like to mention that there are other bark-eating animals in Northeastern North America that haven't gone extinct.  Moose and white-tailed deer come to mind, not to mention the cottontails.  But it's so fun to picture mastodons in New York and New England that I'll play along for a while.

The funniest panelist on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" is Adam Felber. I have his blog bookmarked; lately it's been kinda slow, with some pictures and stories about his new baby (typical blog fodder, no?) and tantalizing (but frankly worrying) news about a "Wait wait" tv show. But he just posted a video about loving America, done by some other guy. No specific candidate endorsement or anything, just funny.