The first sentence of the article:
When 35-year-old singer-songwriter Josh Ritter was in college at Oberlin in the mid-90s, he created his own major: “American History Through Narrative Folk Music.”
Clearly, I missed my calling.
Veteran’s Day: Armistice Day is in memory of the truce of 1918, when on the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the guns fell silent.
![nprfreshair:
Director Lee Unkrich, on coming up with the idea for Toy Story 3 after he accidentally threw out his wife’s stuffed animals: “About a month after we moved, [my wife] asked me if I had seen her beloved stuffed animals, and I said, ‘What box were they in?’ And she said, ‘They weren’t in a box. They were in a garbage bag.’ And my blood instantly ran ice cold. I immediately realized what had happened: I had thrown all of her stuffed animals away in the dumpster behind our building. I feel terrible to this day that that happened, but I do hope that by immortalizing that moment in the movie, that [her stuffed animals] have somehow been immortalized themselves.”](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lajow5btV61qd9dz2o1_500.jpg)
Director Lee Unkrich, on coming up with the idea for Toy Story 3 after he accidentally threw out his wife’s stuffed animals: “About a month after we moved, [my wife] asked me if I had seen her beloved stuffed animals, and I said, ‘What box were they in?’ And she said, ‘They weren’t in a box. They were in a garbage bag.’ And my blood instantly ran ice cold. I immediately realized what had happened: I had thrown all of her stuffed animals away in the dumpster behind our building. I feel terrible to this day that that happened, but I do hope that by immortalizing that moment in the movie, that [her stuffed animals] have somehow been immortalized themselves.”
We thought ‘What is it like to be a guy who is a girl’s toy?’ You’re a guy, but you’re only played with by little girls. And further, he’s just an accessory for Barbie. He doesn’t carry equal weight to Barbie. He’s really no more important than a pair of shoes or a purse or a belt to her, and we knew that he would have to have a complex.
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| — | Dream House? Lee Unkrich, Toy Story 3’s director, on coming up with Ken’s motivation. (via nprfreshair) |
One more….
Terry Gross and Jon Stewart on stage at the 92nd Street Y, on September 29 2010. The interview will air Monday on Fresh Air. (Photo: Joyce Culver/92nd Street Y)
Two of my favorite media personalities! If only we could get Diane Rehm in the middle ask the audience to send her a tweet, the triptych would be complete.
I’m listening to some of these at school right now and my guts hurt and I’m wiping my nose from eating spicy potato chips and it basically looks like I’m listening to opera while crying and in a way it appears that I am but not for the obvious reasons.
Track six is the singing of a Pablo Neruda poem over a classical arrangement by Lieberson. “Amor mio, si muero y tu no mueres” (“My love, if I die and you don’t”)
It’s beautiful. Check out the write-up on it:
It’s a frightening question couples never want to face: who will die first? Set to a love sonnet by Pablo Neruda, Lieberson’s sumptuously scored music radiates the tenuous warmth of an Indian summer. And, sadly, less than eight months after this live recording was made, Lieberson himself faced the answer to that question. His wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who sings this performance, died from cancer at age 52.
Oof.
YOU GUYS.
Experience Dave Rawlings’ live session at NPR’s KEXP (with Gillian Welch!) on YouTube. The video and audio quality are great, and it’s all so good.
Click here for the other videos/audio; there are four songs. You can, uh, thank me later.
I like pandas. But octopuses…they just can’t beat octopuses.
This is great! From the article:
Much ado is made about the plight of the panda. Pandas are endangered due to habitat destruction, the Chinese tradition of poaching, and a hilariously low birth rate. While their exact fertility rates are unknown (it’s kind of a personal question), most experts believe that pandas reproduce once every ten million years. This has prompted aggressive captivity breeding programs. These never work, because getting pandas to mate is like launching a satellite into orbit. Simply put, pandas and mating are like Quakers and military drafts. Zookeepers have even resorted to showing them pornography, which is more a measure of desperation than scientific training.
Every so often captive pandas will mate (always by accident), and the local news then runs endless loops of a gross panda cub in an incubator as it plots a life of not mating.
Pandas’ problems come from their basic refusal to act like real bears. First of all, real bears like to mate. Real bears also eat things they’re supposed to eat. But pandas, despite having the digestive tract of a carnivore that cannot effectively digest cellulose, nevertheless insist on keeping to a diet that is 90 percent bamboo. This means that they have to feed constantly, subtracting from time that could otherwise be spent at least pretending to care about mating.
7 Songs performed live, six of which from Swell Season’s forthcoming album “Strict Joy”, out October 27.
Nobody wants to high five because the swine flu will KILL YOU, so here are some alternatives. Complete with pictures.
I’m a firm believer in the Snap and Flick.
I’m never going to the website for an NPR show again. I accidentally went to the website for the show “A Way With Words.” For some reason I’d always imagined the people as trendy hipsters, and they’re clearly not. Now the show will never be the same.
Ha, me too. I frequently imagine that NPR hosts somehow all look cooler than regular talk-radio hosts, that they all carry messenger bags and listen to Calexico or Joanna Newsom and read Dave Eggers novels while taking public transportation to work every morning.
And then I imagine that I’d totally fit in working with them, and they would encourage me to wear more plaid flannel and we’d have great music and political discussions over an inoffensively omnivorous lunch.
