Your favorite blog got a shout-out in the “Guy Noir” segment of this week’s “Prairie Home Companion,” which is broadcast on NPR local public radio stations nationwide. (But you knew that, you damned totebagger!)
The reference comes at around the 7:20-ish mark and is made by Brad Paisley, a country music star. The context is a country songwriter complaining about the internet distractions that impede his productivity and reciting a list of apps, sites, etc., with vacuous-sounding names, including your own Balloon Juice. So we’ve got that going for us. Woohoo!
Open thread!
BGinCHI
I always suspected Just Some Fuckhead was one of the writers of that show.
MomSense
And then they talked about people needing animals. Huh.
Mike J
Prairie Home Companion is produced and distributed by American Public Media, an entirely different network from National Public Radio.
Shell
Damn, I missed that!
singfoom
I hate a Prairie Home Companion. I didn’t hear the reference because I’ll turn my radio off as soon as I hear the intro music. God what a horrible show. I cannot understand the appeal of it.
I’ve always assumed it’s for people that are older than I am. (Closer to 40 than 30).
singfoom
@Mike J: Yet it is heard on many many many NPR stations because they license it…..but yes, at the beginning of the show you hear the APM intro, it’s my signal to listen to something else.
Major Major Major Major
Got an interview with History’s Greatest Monster’s data team on Friday, wish me luck!
Also, it’s my birthday.
singfoom
@Major Major Major Major: Happy birthday and good luck on the interview.
Germy Shoemangler
I remember reading many years ago that Garrison lost his only manuscript copy of a novel he’d written. I think he left it on a bus or a train. He never found it.
He re-wrote the book from scratch, from memory.
He announced recently he will be retiring from the radio show. Will it continue with a new host?
Germy Shoemangler
I think Garrison was one of the people who left the New Yorker magazine after Tina Brown took over. I don’t think she missed him.
schrodinger's cat
@singfoom: Yeah I don’t get the appeal either.
karen marie
@singfoom: I used to feel that way but one summer it was on the radio at the same time I was driving home from my then puppy/now big girl’s Sunday play group. Turns out it’s one of the better shows. Doesn’t hurt that GK is a DFH.
Germy Shoemangler
@karen marie:
I confess I had to google that.
guachi
Haters.
I enjoy listening to APHC every once in awhile. It’s a good show to listen to while driving and the show seems like a throwback now. It’s not a mean show and that’s a rarity. Plus, it’s fun to see live, which I’ve done of few times when the show goes to N. Virginia around Memorial Day.
Dork
If I’m going to listen to a radio show, I’ll take Phil Hendrie over PHC any day.
The Other Chuck
I liked PHC 20 years ago. The formula being exactly the same now means I’m not such a big fan anymore. Don’t understand the rage but I guess some people just love to hate.
Benw
@Major Major Major Major: happy b-day and good luck!
So my comments contribute in some small way to Brad Paisley not releasing any more music? TIME NOT WASTED
Major Major Major Major
I saw Keillor do a one-man show one time. It was really good. Very different from APHC. Funny story about the night he was conceived.
Trollhattan
@Major Major Major Major:
You’re going to work for Jimmy Carter? You go, boy-o!
Betty Cracker
@karen marie: Yeah, I listen if it comes on while I’m driving. Unless I’m listening to stuff in my collection, I listen to public radio pretty much exclusively in the car. I’m glad I wasn’t listening when they mentioned Balloon Juice. I might have been surprised enough to rear-end a garbage truck or something!
jl
Pretty good for an almost tp 10,000 miserable center-slightly-left political blog!
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: good luck and congrats!
Trollhattan
Any show that gives us performances from the likes of Gillian Welsh and Sarah Jarosz is to be treasured. Full stop.
Hal
I don’t know how else to say this, but APHC might be the whitest radio program in existence. It seems tailor made for small town, Midwestern white people who think take out Chinese is exotic. How people listen in their cars without falling asleep is a miracle.
Germy Shoemangler
@Major Major Major Major: His quiet one-man stories are what I like the most. I really don’t care for his musical numbers or the big production comedy. I like when he just sits and tells his quietly absurd tales about Lake Woebegone.
Decades ago I had an audiobook of his stories. Some real hilarious stuff, somewhat like early James Thurber. But the musical numbers make me change the dial.
Did he used to have an advice column at Salon.com or did I dream that?
Dadadadadadada
@guachi:
Hasn’t it always? My understanding is that it was created in the ’70s as a homage to the variety shows of the ’30s or some earlier era.
Hungry Joe
I stumbled across PHC about thirty years ago and loved it instantly. Listened and proselytized for a few years, and then one day something snapped and I found Keillor’s voice intolerable and his attitude thinly veiled smug. Then I read that he hates the banjo, and that sealed the deal.
Germy Shoemangler
@Dadadadadadada:
And now the ’70s are as far away from us as the ’30s were from the ’70s.
Where has the time flown?
Trollhattan
@Germy Shoemangler:
Yup, Mister Blue or somesuch.
Mike J
@singfoom:
NPR is a network that sells shows to public radio stations. The stations that buy shows from NPR usually buy shows from American Public Media, Pacifica, Public Radio International, and other networks. NPR doesn’t own the stations that carry their shows, and the stations aren’t exclusive. Since the stations are carrying shows from other networks along with locally produced content, it’s wrong to call them “NPR stations”. You might as well call them “BBC Stations” since many of them buy BBC newscasts overnight.
Public radio != NPR.
Germy Shoemangler
@Trollhattan: I almost choked on my powdermilk biscuit when I heard the balloon-juice reference.
JPL
@Major Major Major Major: Happy Birthday and I hope your interview goes well.
Congrats to BJ on the shout out.
Shell
Happy Birthday, Major. Mines tomorrow.
I.ve been a fan of PHC for years. I usually catch the Sunday repeat.
Everyone to his own taste, but I don’t quite understand the vitriol it brings out in some people. I remember a NY Times book review of one of Keillors books. The review was by Spalding Gray. I guess they’d given it to him because they were both monologists of a kind. But he absolutely hated PHC, which he said in no uncertain terms at the beginning of the review.
Germy Shoemangler
@Trollhattan:
Can you imagine today’s clickbait, fastpaced version of Salon attempting such a thing? It was a simpler time, apparently…
scav
Find the similarity both pleasing and annoying, depends entirely on the mood. Rather like walking into your childhood bedroom and Mom’s kept up all the posters and your gym socks are sill in the drawers. Comforting to vaguely creepy, with a side of they’re playing with an even older generations radio so your great uncle’s gym socks may be in the drawer next to yours. Often a fair number of barbs and mockery underneath the thick patina of apparent nostalgia. And the foley engineers. Those I generally always like. They’re a real hot item.
JanieM
I was never a fan to begin with, and this Keillor piece from a few years ago just served to remind me why. What a schmuck.
singfoom
@Mike J: I’ll amend my comment to NPR Member stations. Yes, Public Radio != NPR, but NPR is the biggest name in public radio. And yes, I know the makeup of NPR stations and that each station is it’s own company and that NPR doesn’t own the stations. It’s a fair assumption when someone mentions a public radio show that they heard it on NPR.
Booger
@The Other Chuck: Yes, to the extent it sounds like the same show endlessly repeated for 42 years. Which is partly true, because it dominates the left wing of the dial on Saturday nights, then is rebroadcast on Sunday for about half the day.
Mnemosyne
@Trollhattan:
I liked Mr. Blue — he had decent advice and probably the best tip on how to quit smoking that I’ve ever seen. Basically, it was to break the habit by choosing one cigarette at a time to stop smoking. So, first you stop smoking, say, the waking-up cigarette, and once you’re out of that habit, you stop the before-bed cigarette, etc.
Betty Cracker
@Mike J: I changed it in the OP — “NPR” was my lazy shorthand for “public radio stations,” but you have shown me the error of my ways.
catclub
@The Other Chuck: APHC has been going about 40 years now. I think that alone is impressive.
I rarely listen now, but listened regularly for the first 20-25 years.
It will be interesting to find out if it can keep going after Garrison Keillor is gone.
singfoom
My hate for APHC is based on it’s timeslot because it comes on after All Things Considered on my radio dial. I also know someone who worked for GK for 2 years as an assistant and they told me stories which reinforced my sense that he’s a giant fucking asshole.
If weird nostalgia works for you and you enjoy the program, that’s cool. To each their own.
Mnemosyne
@singfoom:
I always say I heard it on NPR but I think technically the station is a PRI (Public Radio International) station. It’s the “talk” station and the “real” NPR station is more music oriented (KPCC vs KCRW).
Trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
“Balloon Juice: come for the pie, stay for the pedantry.”
laura
@Major Major Major Major: many happy returns O’the day. Best wishes on your interview.
Schlemazel Khan
I have listened, though not religiously for 40 years. Those are my people in Lake Wobegon but I suspect they appear in small town America everywhere. GK passed his peak 20 years ago but was still very good until about 10 years ago. In the late 80’s to early 90’s his ‘letter from Lake Wobegon’ was a novel in serial form, and a really great novel at that. He had a stroke 2-3 years ago and I don’t think that helped him any either.
Chris Thile will be taking the show over soon, it is the second time GK has left & it did not go well the first time.
GK has an enormous ego (real name is Gary but he decided Garrison ( a small town on the edge of the prairie here in MN) sounded more hep) and I bet I would hate to sit next to him for 2 hours on a plane unless he was in the mood to be friendly. But the show was, and in many ways still is, a showcase for some great musical talent that gets ignored on commercial radio. His guest run the gamut from opera, to choral, to bluegrass and everything in between. He has had real live legends like Chet Atkins on and very talented nobodies.
That said I agree it could be an acquired taste, particularly his sense of humor which is very dry and quiet. OTOH throughout the 90s he hammered on Newt & the GOP and in the 00s he was unmerciful on Boy Blunder and his super friends.
LAO
@Major Major Major Major: Good Luck! Happy Birthday, too!
catclub
@Trollhattan: Also: Pete Seeger, Sweet Honey in the Rock
Gin & Tonic
@Shell: And now Spalding Gray is dead and Garrison Keillor is alive, so you haters in this thread be very careful.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Good luck and happy birthday!
catclub
@Schlemazel Khan:
I do not know if I heard the Backwards Talker the first time. But it was enjoyable knowing a) there was someone signing the show,
and b) the signer was utterly flummoxed by that.
Schlemazel Khan
@Major Major Major Major:
Good luck on the interview but please, please, PLEASE, promise us you will not show up here the week after the election telling us how you personally were responsible for the win and all those other stories being given by high up staff are all wrong and you even have a picture of HGM shaking your had to prove it!
Oh, and Hippo Birdy Two Ewes
Brachiator
Very nice.
@Major Major Major Major:
Heppie B-dey!
NotMax
Filipino Trump-like candidate leads in presidential race.
What a world, what a world.
Major Major Major Major
@Schlemazel Khan: People do that?
I imagine I’d mostly be responsible for some annoying targeted mailers.
Schlemazel Khan
20 years ago every ‘Guy Noir’ segment ended with Guy and whatever character Tim Russel was playing shooting each other. It was pretty funny but they have beaten it to death now & it is only occasionally good. ‘Lives of the Cowboys’ is almost as old and is aging better, it really is more a look at social norms and conventions. The ‘sponsors’ of the show are always good.
You guys may have heard of America’s first fully enclosed shopping mall, Southdale. It was followed here by Brookdale and Rosedale. All of that is just to set up an 80s joke for a sponsor “Bertha’s Kitty Boutique” Locations in all the malls, South, Brook, Rose and Mon. Stupid but it made me laugh.
Aimai
@Germy Shoemangler: yes i had that collection too. The stories were little gems of wry observation.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
Wished you feliz cumpleaños in a earlier dead thread; no reason not to do so again in a more active one.
Schlemazel Khan
@Major Major Major Major:
Here after 08. Some guy showed up that had never been around before as far as I could tell and started bragging about how it was he and his team that won the election and all those people talking about data mining and metadata identifying Obama voters were full of it. When I called him on it (because he had a very low-level job) He got VERY huffy and his proof of how important he was consisted of a picture he had of BHO shaking his hand.
raven
@catclub: Don’t forget Andy Stein from Commander Cody!
ruemara
@Hal: This black person actually likes PHC. It’s very mellow, low-key humour. I like the gentleness. The world is loud and silly, sometimes it’s nice to have a different media.
@Major Major Major Major: Hipy Papy Bthuthdth Thuthda Bthuthdy! Who is History’s Greatest Monster today? No matter who, good luck!
rikyrah
A Democratic candidate for the West Virginia state Senate was brutally attacked at a political cookout just two days before the state’s primary in an attack his family believes was politically motivated, WSAZ reported.
Richard Ojeda suffered eight facial fractures, severe swelling, and a concussion after suspect Jonathan Porter allegedly showed up to a Sunday cookout uninvited, according to the report.
Porter allegedly asked Ojeda, a military veteran, for help putting a bumper sticker on his car and started beating him with brass knuckles when he bent down to help, the local station reported. Witnesses told police the suspect also tried to run Ojeda over with his car while trying to flee the scene.
Porter turned himself into police about six hours later and was charged with felony destruction of property, malicious assault and attempt to commit a felony, according to WSAZ.
After the attack, Ojeda posted a photo of his battered face from the hospital on Facebook, and said he believes the attack was planned.
A Ghost To Most
@Major Major Major Major:
Happy Happy Joy Joy, and calm,cool, confidence for the interview.
Major Major Major Major
@Schlemazel Khan: Well that’s just silly.
And thanks, everybody! :)
rikyrah
May 09, 2016 10:00 AM
The Party That Set Out to Destroy Government
By Nancy LeTourneau
Back in the 1980’s, President Reagan famously said, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem.” But as Norman Ornstein said recently, Newt Gingrich took that to a whole new level.
As a brand new member of the House, he had a full-blown theory of how Republicans could break out of their seemingly permanent minority, and build a majority.
And over the next 16 years, he put that plan into action. He delegitimized the Congress and the Democratic leadership, convincing people that they were arrogant and corrupt and that the process was so bad that anything would be better than this. He tribalized the political process. He went out and recruited the candidates, and gave them the language to use about how disgusting and despicable and horrible and immoral and unpatriotic the Democrats were. That swept in the Republican majority in 1994.
The problem is that all the people he recruited to come in really believed that shit. They all came in believing that Washington was a cesspool. So what followed has been a very deliberate attempt to blow up and delegitimize government, not just the president but the actions of government itself in Washington.
singfoom
@rikyrah: I’ll put a trillion samolians on the fact that the guy who attacked him is a “REAL ‘MURICAN”, has a gun rack in the car he meant to hit him with and is a Trump supporter.
I hope that Ojeda wins his primary tomorrow. I bet he gets a lot of sympathy votes
ruemara
@rikyrah: that is insane. What the hell is going on this election?
Xantar
Is anybody following the story of Uber and Lyft throwing a hissyfit over new regulations in Austin? The more details I read about the story, the funnier it gets.
It turns out that after Austin put in these regulations, Uber and Lyft got a referendum on the ballot and paid $8 million in marketing to try to repeal the regulations. Austin voters got so pissed off at the heavy-handed tactics that they defeated the referendum 55-44.
So now Uber and Lyft are threatening to leave the city and crying about the tyranny of government takeover (the “government” in this case was the will of the citizens who were voting on a referendum that Uber and Lyft asked for in the first place).
I’ve occasionally used Uber, but ultimately I’ll survive without them if need be. And it’s kind of glorious to see them reduced to WATBs.
Major Major Major Major
@Xantar: Uber is a really awful company. (Though I do use it. Before Flywheel came around, it was basically impossible to call a cab in SF.)
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Trollhattan:
Unfortunately, those performances are not enhanced when GK insists on crooning along in accompaniment, which he does far too often in ratio to his talent.
bupalos
PHC mostly annoys me but I have an odd fondness for the schtick with the anodyne middle age couple that is constantly facing down transitional anxiety of that time of life by eating ketchup, which has “natural mellowing agents.” The voice actors on that are really good. They should push that skit a little further though.
Keilor’s voice I find infuriating. He has a formulaic cadence where he’s forcing everything to sound significant and poetic just by this halting high-and-fast to low-and-slow delivery.
Steeplejack
If that was a shout-out, apparently we are redefining shout-out way, way down.
Gin & Tonic
@Xantar: One of the funny things about the referendum is that Uber and Lyft spent $8 million, and the opposition to them spent $100,000. According to some reports I’ve read, the two companies have already ceased operations in Austin. Their picture should be in the B-J lexicon under WATB.
D58826
@singfoom: kinda beat me to it. Since ‘Ojeda’ is not a name that a real Murkin would have, even if he is a vet.
A Ghost To Most
@Gin & Tonic:
And it was apparently over having to fingerprint the drivers?
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Call me naive, but I’m pretty sure you don’t accidentally or impulsively bring brass knuckles with you and just happen to have them when you attack someone unexpectedly.
Xantar
@A Ghost To Most:
The problem is that if Uber and Lyft are responsible for fingerprinting their drivers, then that moves them one step closer to having to admit that drivers are their employees.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: read that story. very chilling.
Brachiator
@Xantar:
I haven’t been following this.
It’s weird. There have been stories about how Uber an Lyft are totally taking over the taxi industry and others about how they are being fought off or turned into just another taxi service.
Can we just skip immediately to self-driving cars?
? Martin
Vacuous-sounding? Fuck that. Balloons are the complete opposite of vacuous. They are effectively the definition of non-vacuous because they exist for the sole purpose of filling it with something.
Now, in our personal case we fill it with assholes, which is interesting because an asshole is a negative thing, it’s the absence of ass. So maybe they’re right after all.
Gin & Tonic
@A Ghost To Most: Yeah, from what I understand it was about regulating them like taxi companies. Which they are, IMO.
OldDave
@singfoom:
You might win that based on the ‘accused’ assailant’s appearance, but he’s the brother of a Democrat who’s running for local office there. Sounds more like backwoods local dynasty politics to me – the sort of thing that gave us Kim Davis in Kentucky.
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne: You just don’t hang around in the right circles. There are people who have a variety of weapons, including brass knuckles, on or near their person at all times.
D58826
@rikyrah: No way anyone would confuse me with being a fan of St. Ronulus the Unready but I think there is a lot of truth to the article. While Reagan started us on the road, Newt kicked it into overdrive. Reagan raised as well as lowered taxes, helped broker a SS rescue plan, signed on to immigration reform with Teddy Kennedy and negotiated a couple of arms treaties with the Evil empire. And yes he has an entire list of bad things on his record as well. All of which has been sent down the GOP memory hole. Will Bunch has a great book comparing what Reagan actually did vs the idol that the GOP worships at now., ‘Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy’. And for those not familiar with Bunch he is a flaming liberal and Bernie supporter so he isn’t a Reagan apologist by any stretch
Anoniminous
@Brachiator:
No.
Reason #1: fully automatic cars cannot handle the insanity and bad driving skills of human drivers
Reason #2: corporations don’t want to pay the taxes to keep the roads maintained so the driverless cars cannot tell where the lanes are.
Schlemazel Khan
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Any GK singing is too much singing. He used to have a nice baritone & harmonized well with many singers. Now he does not have the voice & either nobody has the courage to tell him or he just does not care.
When I was a kid there was a very old lady who used to have a beautiful voice (or so I was told) and nobody had the heart to tell her she now sounded like two cats fighting. Many Sundays I suffered through one of her solos.
NotMax
@singfoom
Simoleons. For future reference.
BTW, 2 suskins = 1 simoleon.
Schlemazel Khan
@bupalos:
Tim Russel is the guy, he has some talent at imitation and has worked in radio for 50 years.
I actually went to radio school with Tim. He graduated from UoM with a communications degree & found he couldn’t break into radio so he went to Brown Institute. He was an odd duck in that he had no sense of humor at all about anything I could recognize. He did all these great voices but all he knew to do with them was stolen from the imitators of the day. Good pipes, decent imitator but at the time he had no real gift for comedy. Because he always worked for the old peoples station (WCCO mostly) I never hear him work so I don’t know if he developed that or not.
germy shoemangler
@Schlemazel Khan: He’s on the wiki of the pedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Russell
Poopyman
@ruemara:
The Brownshirts are back, and this time they’re “Merkins.
? Martin
@Xantar:
It’s an interesting conflict, no question. It’s hard to defend the existing taxi industry in cities like NY and SF. A taxi medallion in NY cost north of $1M pre-Uber, for a $30K vehicle driven by near minimum-wage drivers. The city is extracting $1M which consumers need to pay in order to keep transportation supply constrained. That wouldn’t be so bad if the city was reinvesting that $1M into the transit system, but they didn’t really do that. SF has a similar dynamic going on as do other cities, but on different scales.
And if you look at cars that people own, Uber is simply taking a depreciating asset and putting to work. My car is sitting in a parking structure right now, doing nothing but losing value. It’s a noble endeavor (the company management is far from noble, however)
The reason for the old taxi structure was that you needed centralized dispatchers to take the calls and send out taxis from the various companies. The medallions were the mechanism to stitch that all together. And there was no incentive for taxis to get better because you had no say in which driver or car you got. Uber solves both problems by having software do the dispatching, giving you better information on when your car will arrive, and the review mechanism gives you information and an incentive for the cars/drivers to improve. Now, the city regulated taxi service could adopt both of these mechanisms and cut off Uber’s primary value propositions, but they haven’t bothered. They could probably even pay Uber to just run the fucking thing for them. They haven’t bothered with that either.
Ultimately the taxi industry is fucked. Uber’s poor management is its own worst enemy and the dual competition structure for infrastructure is problematic to resolve (Uber and Lyft are competing for both drivers and passengers, which turns into a winner-take-all dynamic within local markets – every city will inevitably become an Uber city or a Lyft city (etc) because network effects will ultimately prevail). In the end, Uber has a much better service and consumers are supporting that.
Here’s where the feds ought to intervene, but they probably can’t see why. There should be a DOT open standard for ride sharing/services, that covers both dispatching and reviews that ride services are mandated to support. A consumer could then request a ride that would be dispatched to all services, with the reviews/feedback coming back through the service. The taxi companies could then change that layer of their service and compete head-on. This would eliminate the local monopolies because the network effects would be distributed to all companies and it would then force the companies to compete in a more traditional manner.
burnspbesq
@Trollhattan:
Agreed, which is why I subscribe to the Mountain Stage podcast.
Olivia
I have listened to it from the beginning and attended many live shows, which puts me in the older than dirt group. I learned to love it even more than I did when I was young after I found out that I have dozens of relatives who hate it with a blinding white rage because of Keillor’s politics and all the little jabs at Republicans and conservatives in general.
Schlemazel Khan
@germy shoemangler:
Interesting, he never mentioned Notre Dame or that it was law school he was at the U for! If I had his talent for voices and my sense of humor I’d have my own wiki page too I bet. Oh well, I have a face made for radio but not the voice.
@efgoldman:
Sadly for everyone else but fortunately for the individual, hearing goes bad along with the voice going out!
Iowa Old Lady
@Hal: Hee. That is so true.
I once heard a white cop talking about driving an African American teen somewhere and APHC came on. The kid was incredulous. Really? This is what white people listen to?
The Lodger
@Schlemazel Khan: As I remember it, the lineup included “Roy ‘n Dale, Airedale, Teasdale, Chippendale, Mondale and all the other fine shopping centers.”
I used to work for someone named Teasdale and would occasionally torment him with references to this.
Schlemazel Khan
@Iowa Old Lady:
I would not expect APHC to be an urban thing but I bet a lot of rural AAs would see the humor. GK also regularly has blues and soul performers on. It is not all a-pickin and a-grinnin
@The Lodger:
I bet he used all those at one time or another. I thought people needed to know the names of the real places and to get ‘Mondale’
NotMax
@Schlemazel Khan
Made me flash back to Fred Quimby, the MGM executive in charge of cartoons from ’37 to ’55.
Uncle Cosmo
@Major Major Major Major: Hey M4, do you realize that 15 nations celebrate your birthday every year?
It’s Victory Day (День Победы–Den Pobedy) commemorating the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the USSR. (You’ll find a list of celebrating countries in the Wiki article.) There’s even a song for it, which you can hear here:
This is joy
With tears in our eyes…
–May it be your day of victory over un(der)employment, Major!
Brachiator
@Schlemazel Khan:
There’s a flm in current release, “Florence Foster Jenkins,” starring Meryl Streep which I just cannot bring myself to check out. It’s about a New York socialite and patron of the arts who fancied herself to be an opera singer even though she had no talent. She was protected by friends and lovers and even managed to give a Carnegie Hall recital in 1944 that did not go over well with more objective listeners. But its supposed to be a quirky comedy about love and who’s to say who really has talent. But the more prosaic reality seems to be about a rich woman whose hangers on encouraged her fantasies because they could benefit from doing so.
D58826
Oddly my very conservative sister and BIL enjoy APHC
John Revolta
@Steeplejack:
Yeah, I must agree. This actually smells more like a piss-take to me.
? Martin
@Anoniminous:
Fully autonomous cars are pretty close to solving 1, and it’s a virtuous cycle. The more autonomous cars, the better behaved the driving will be, and the more incentive to add digital infrastructure for those vehicles (cheaper to deploy and maintain).
Autonomous cars would work better without lane markers, but this is a solved problem already. Autonomous vehicles have little problem with poorly marked roads because they have a host of redundant data to work from (distance from road edge, distance from other cars, GPS and maps, etc.) Usually the autonomous car has more and better information than the humans.
But the corporations will pony up. The trucking industry in the US hit $700B in revenues last year. Costs are roughly ⅓ capital cost of truck, ⅓ driver pay and benefits, ⅓ fuel, maintenance, insurance, tolls, etc. If they can automate the vehicle starting with port-port shipping (going from container ship to distribution facility, distribution to airport etc – activities where there are staff at each end to handle loading/unloading rather than relying on the driver to do it, and where the routes are limited in number and generally well supported) they’ll probably save north of $50B annually just from that move alone. Paying for the infrastructure needed to make autonomous transport a reality will be trivial. That will expand into other shipping areas, and the infrastructure will then be available for consumer autonomous vehicles, etc. A standard semi tractor is depreciated over only about 6 years at the big shipping companies – they don’t last very long, so replacement cycle is shorter than people realize. (Those rigs get sold to 2nd tier shipping companies and then often to indys).
AI is making pretty serious leaps right now, as are the cost/quality of sensors, computing power, data infrastructure, etc. It’ll arrive much sooner than people realize.
Poopyman
Christie to lead Trump White House transition team
Heh! Indeed. He must figure the odds are astronomically against, yet still going for the grift. Isn’t he still a governator?
Gin & Tonic
@? Martin:
The city doesn’t get that revenue, and hasn’t since LaGuardia was Mayor. The price is entirely determined by the market, and all those re-sales of medallions are private transactions. The price is, of course, influenced by the fact that the supply of medallions is artificially limited, but they’ve all been in private hands forever.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
The animators at Termite Terrace (aka Warner Bros) had very similar complaints about their producer, Leon Schlesinger. Apparently the voice of Daffy Duck is a straight-up impersonation of Schlesinger, but fortunately he never caught on.
Schlemazel Khan
@Brachiator:
Those old enough may remember the Petula Clark song, “Downtown” that had a revival when sung by an old lady with a bad voice. It was in the top 40 for a time
For years Dixie cup boxes came with offers for really cheap LPs of the greatest hits, Pop, rock and Country tunes but hey were all performed by one woman. I never care enough to send away for one but I learned years later that the woman was the wife of the CEO and she had a terrible voice. Made me think of Charles Foster Cain.
John Revolta
@NotMax: Eddie Seltzer, the producer who took over the Warner Bros. cartoon unit after Leon Schlesinger left, once barged into a story conference and yelled, “What does all this goddam laughter have to do with the making of animated cartoons?”
Germy Shoemangler
@Schlemazel Khan: OMG you’ve brought back old memories with that one.
Dora Hall. We had her 45rpm “Did He Call Today Mama” (written by Randy Newman). She covered pop tunes. Her husband even bought her a TV show to star in.
Hadn’t thought about that in years…
Peale
@NotMax: Even by Democracy standards, Philippines politics is messed up. They have the first past the post AND multiple parties without a run-off so it is never clear that whomever wins has a mandate of the majority of voters because no one ever gets the majority of voters. The best post-marcos president was probably Ramos, who only won a little less than a quarter of the vote.
On top of that, the VP slot is voted on separately, so the President’s party doesn’t necessarily get that slot. The winner of the VP slot is probably going to be one of the Marcos Clan, but his party is different from Duterte’s. The legislative elections are at a different time, again, so it’s not like anyone ever has coattails immediately. It was probably designed to make sure that no one ever amasses Marcos levels of power by denying anyone the ability to lead a single party to control both the legislature and the executive at the same time. But it also ensures that nothing ever really gets done…good if you’re already on top of the oligarchy. Bad if you could use some clean water in your house.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Strictly speaking, KPCC is a SCPR (Southern California Public Radio) station. As others have said, the stations are mostly affiliates of several public radio networks (NPR, APM, PRI, etc.) but are run by a local public radio group. So APHC is actually created by Minnesota Public Radio but distributed by American Public Media.
scav
@D58826: Well, lacking a sense of certain understated, dry humor, the surface reading of a lot of it could be very soothing and stereotype re-enforcing. People can miss midwestern angry too. It is Colbert? Nope. But it’s not Thomas Kinkade either.
John Revolta
@Mnemosyne: Schlesinger wasn’t a jerk particularly; he just didn’t care much about cartoons. The directors liked him because they left them alone.
Major Major Major Major
@? Martin: This is my understanding as well, pretty much to a T.
John Revolta
@John Revolta: HE left them alone. Also too.
The Lodger
@Schlemazel Khan: I think he actually used Clydesdale (which I forgot) and Airedale. The women in our department would have been merciless if he’d tried to use Chippendale.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Nothing whatsoever to do with ol’ Alex, but the remembered title (originally aired in September of 1944) is linked to here just for you.
The Ham Ham episode.
Major Major Major Major
@? Martin: Once trucking is on board, it’s a done deal. This doesn’t have the most wonderful ramifications for carbon emissions, but whatcha gonna do
Schlemazel Khan
@Germy Shoemangler:
That was the Dixie Cup lady!
The Golux
@Brachiator:
My father had an LP of one of her concerts; it might even be that Carnegie Hall recital. It’s probably still kicking around here somewhere. It’s impossible to listen to it for more than a minute or so.
catclub
@D58826: Ted Cruz loves “The Princess Bride”. Deal with it.
Schlemazel Khan
@Roger Moore:
and KPCC is owned by MPR! They made a shit-ton of money in the 80s with their own catalog selling crap. Sold it for like a billion dollars & went on a buying spree
Germy Shoemangler
@Schlemazel Khan: Solo Cozy Cups:
http://historysdumpster.blogspot.com/2012/08/dora-hall.html
Brachiator
@Schlemazel Khan:
I think I vaguely remember hearing the bad version, maybe on some radio novelties show. It was ghastly.
As an aside, it is funny that Kane’s solo applause at his wife’s “singing” has become widely disseminated on the Internets as a GIF, and probably 99 percent of the people who use it or view it have no idea of where it came from.
Germy Shoemangler
Which one of us is Brad Paisley?
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
There’s also the whole matter of needing to regulate the drivers because there are a whole host of abuses they can commit if we trust to the “free market”. Once you get into a taxi, you’re effectively a hostage to the driver, and unregulated taxis took full advantage. They’d do things like changing the fare after people got into the cab, taking ridiculous routes to drive up the fare (especially with people who were from out of town and who would supposedly not know any better), etc. Keeping that kind of thing under control was a major reason for taxi regulations.
Schlemazel Khan
@Brachiator:
It took me a bit but the ladys name was Mrs. Miller – WIKI
and here is the youtube of the nightmare
OH GAWD! SHE WHISTLES AS BADLY AS SHE SINGS! look at that album cover, some big hits on that bad boy!
Poopyman
@Germy Shoemangler: Well, between you and me it ain’t me, so it must be you.
? Martin
@Major Major Major Major:
Once you move to autonomous, the incentives for going electric follow. At a minimum, an autonomous truck can be charged automatically, but will probably need a human to refuel. The tractor needs to be a certain mass – it can’t be completely dominated by the trailer. One solution is to just fill it with a fuckton of batteries and electric motors are loaded with torque which is what you want in a rig anyway.
As to the problem solving side of autonomous, that’s marching forward. Interesting tidbit from the Viv demo today:
So if you want to know how it handles “On my way to my brother’s house, I need to pick up some cheap wine that goes well with lasagna,”, it’ll output the code for doing that. That’s cool.
NotMax
@Schlemazel Khan
Without even looking, her claim to fame was being in the audience for nearly every Johnny Carson Tonight Show
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
For port to port stuff, electric trucks are actually a plausible alternative. ISTR that the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are already using them to move stuff around within the ports because they’re better for air quality, which is a big deal there.
Schlemazel Khan
@NotMax:
I believe that Miller was not this one but am not sure. I remember her from Jack Paar & Steve Allens show before Carson
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Nope. A different Miller, amazingly enough. Lillian Dorothy Miller.
The singer was Elva Ruby Miller.
Mnemosyne
@John Revolta:
I can’t get to my copy of “Chuck Amuck” — was it Schlesinger or Seltzer who installed the time clock?
NotMax
@Brachiator
Well, if that don’t take the rag offen the bush.
Live and learn. Thanks.
Brachiator
@Schlemazel Khan:
Yes! That’s it.
Thanks for giving me nightmares. I won’t be able to shake this tune for a while.
NotMax
Anyone watching second season of Outlander?
Have downloaded the first five episodes for when have the time and inclination, but not looked at any of it yet.
Bailey
@singfoom:
I’ve thought this for the past 20 years.
I’ve yet to meet anyone under the age of 50, then or now, who cops to liking that show. I find GK himself insufferable and smug.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
No probs. This has been a nice politics free interlude.
Mary G
@Major Major Major Major: Fingers crossed for you and Happy Birthday!
I think Brad Paisley was referring to BJ because earlier he says Hot Air, and isn’t that where our JGC hung out in the early middle ages of the internet? And BJ is named BJ because Hot Air is what balloons are full of? Sort of a tribute to his old stomping grounds pre-Enlightenment? Or am I having a senior moment? It’s many years since I read RW blogs in a futile effort to understand them.
Mary G
@NotMax: Loved the Outlander books and would love to see the show, but budget doesn’t stretch to Starz. I read the recaps on Tom and Lorenzo to get my fix. They analyze the costumes on Wednesdays.
NotMax
@Mary G
Nor does my budget, but full episodes are fairly easily findable online for watching or download.
(Shan’t provide a link due to copyright concerns.)
? Martin
@efgoldman: Yeah, that wasn’t phrased well. The city, by failing to expanding the number of medallions has run the price up. It’s an artificial constraint on supply that consumers don’t recognize the benefits of. That’s all I was getting at.
If the city was collecting that revenue and using it to improve transportation overall, that’d at least be some recognized benefit, but that isn’t happening. This isn’t fundamentally different from the trucking regulation pre-1980 that limited supply and kept prices artificially high.
walden
Old guy now, but started listening to prairie home when I was in my early 20s. Love the show for the corny stories….and the musicians are just fantastic. What a great platform for some great vocalists and guitar players we’d never hear of otherwise….along with the many appearances by the great Chet Atkins and others.
My kids (millenials) don’t like the show at all….but I started listening to it when I was their age.
I’ll be sorry to see it go.
NotMax
@walden
Plans are not for it to go. Change of hosts already announced.
satby
@Major Major Major Major: in case you didn’t see it from the late night/ early morning thread, Happy Birthday again. Now with extra good luck wishes on the interview!
Mai.naem.mobile
Wow,surprised by the hate. PHC is not my favorite PR show but I can listen to it.GK.had.some funny stuff when Norm Coleman was running against Al Franken.I didn’t know GK had a nasty reputation either. Oh,well. There’s newish TAL-like show on NPR called Snap Judgement which I have been listening to,which is really good.
Miss Bianca
@Mary G: Outlander *and* Black Sails available on DVD now from…ahem…your local library. Or some library. ; )
@NotMax: Not yet, but friends say it’s fabulous. That’s my favorite part of the Outlander stories, them in France, so I’m looking forward to it!
different-church-lady
If there’s one bit of wisdom I’ve learned in my life, it’s that shitting on other people’s innocent pleasures is no way to go.
Keith G
My only complaint about Prairie Home Companion is that is has at time been a bit repetitive.
It uses the guise of an old timey radio show to create wry social commentary which poke fun (sometime slyly, sometimes not) at conservative social conventions. I see from some of the comments here that there are folks who just do not get that.
PurpleGirl
@NotMax: If you’re still here — Yes I’m watching the new season of Outlander.
NotMax
@PurpleGirl
Still here (for the nonce). As good as the first season?
PurpleGirl
Yes, it is. I plan at some point to buy the DVDs.
ETA: I can’t comment more without writing a spoiler. They have changed the opening credits but the song is as good as ever.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Hey, it’s late on your birthday, but Happy, Happy!! And good luck going forward!