This Morning I Shot a Bear in My Pajamas

Posted on: June 5th, 2010 by admin 1 Comment

I would have gotten a much closer shot if I weren’t fumbling with my camera in a half sleep. By the time I turned the thing on, he was already this far away.

Why was I in my pajamas? I had fallen asleep on the couch and was awoken, at 8am, by an odd tapping and not at all gentle rapping at my kitchen door. The beast was standing on its hind legs with its front claws against the screen, as if it were doing some kind of yoga. Upward facing bear?

Here, take a look from the outside.

This is not the first time bears have come to visit me. Five years ago, it was totally my fault for leaving garbage in a can outside.

Around that time there were two bears shot dead on my road in the same week. The stories circulating then were: 1. one of them had removed a window AC unit to get into someone’s house; and 2. neighbor Gene Shalit had boasted he feeds the bears.

When I was growing up, the wisdom was that bears fear us more than we fear them, and that they would run away from humans if given a chance. Now the lesson is to always keep your shooter loaded and ready at your bedside (and make sure the settings are ready to get a close-up). Here, let me zoom in so that you can get a better view of this morning’s sighting.

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Dave Ross Makes Me Laugh

Posted on: June 4th, 2010 by admin No Comments

If I were Charles Osgood, I would pick a less talented fill-in.

Click here for this morning’s best and here for the Osgood File archive.

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Hopper: Painting the Loneliness on BBC Radio 4

Posted on: May 31st, 2010 by admin No Comments

There are many reasons to love BBC Radio.

I’m not talking about the World Service, which is how most Americans hear the Beeb on public radio over here. That’s boring. I’m talking about the domestic channels intended for listeners in the U.K. and which I hear over the Internet.

Radio 4 is the closest thing to NPR. During drive time, they air news programs akin to Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the rest of the day and night, instead of filling the time with excruciating talk shows, they air weird kinds of stuff that used to be on the radio here but which disappeared long ago.

The quiz shows, such as I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, are old-fashioned and demented in the best possible way. I find the Shipping Forecast mesmerizing.

On Tuesday, June 1, my first piece for the BBC will air. Called Painting the Loneliness, it’s a half hour program about Edward Hopper’s iconic painting Nighthawks that I co-produced with Judith Kampfner. Half of it consists of documentary interviews – with New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, Whitney curator Barbara Haskell and author Gordon Theisen (who wrote a smart book about the painting). That material is interleaved with dramatic monologues. I imagined what was going through the minds of the figures in the painting. Playwright Michael Dowling wrote the script and acted, along with Jim Frangione and Sara Paul. I directed their performances “on location” at Haven Cafe and Bakery in Lenox, Massachusetts. (My BBC contact noted the “depth of the atmosphere” and noted how different it felt from standard sound effects.)

You can listen to the program when it streams live on Tuesday, 11:30am London time, (click here for live stream) or else on demand for the seven days following.

Posted in Documentary, journalism, new york, new yorker, radio | No Comments »

Hope for the Future

Posted on: May 26th, 2010 by admin No Comments

More and more, filmmakers are absorbing lessons from the DIY ethic that has helped to make music a viable livelihood. This post from John Bradburn is one example of the kind of case study that appears with some regularity on the blog Truly Free Film, which is one of film producer Ted Hope’s sites I have been studying closely along with the writings of Seth Godin. I envision a day – arriving soon, I hope – where we can start applying this model to the medium formerly known as radio.

Posted in Documentary, Sound, journalism, music, radio | No Comments »

Embarrassing Admission: I Watched Every Episode of LOST

Posted on: May 24th, 2010 by admin 2 Comments

And, based on a cursory Google search, my theory about how to make sense of the show seems to have very few adherents, if any. The only thing worse than a nerd is a nerd whose pet theory is completely off base.

I think the entire series was essentially “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” the Ambrose Bierce short story that was made into a famous episode of the Twilight Zone and, not incidentally, glimpsed during an earlier season of Lost. This theory occurred to me a few seasons ago when the show plots devolved into time travel and preposterous gunplay.

The series begins and ends with the opening and closing of Jack’s eye. Those two events bookend the entire run of the show, which took place completely within Jack’s consciousness. The whole series has consisted of Jack’s memories, dreams and projections – onto characters he knew intimately or even fleetingly.

If this theory is true, then the producers were not lying when they said the show’s explanation is not supernatural. It’s purely psychological. There’s no magic, no purgatory: the whole series was Jack’s hypnopompic state (or hypnagogic – I forget which one is which), and in his perception, it went on for six seasons.

I posted this theory on Slate’s entertaining TV Club site devoted to Lost’s sixth season, and I added this query: “Am I overlooking some key element that negates my theory?” Within moments came this response: “yes, the ending shot was of the plane flying overhead, if he died in the crash, there would be no plane and the credit shot would have been the wreckage and bodies.” While I think about whether that shoots my theory out of the water, go ahead and let me know what you think.

Posted in writing | 2 Comments »

The New Rules of the Game

Posted on: May 7th, 2010 by admin No Comments

… according to Elowitz. (Will future generations consider him the Edmond Hoyle of new media?)

Ben Elowitz asserts in paidContent.org that “traditional ways of judging ‘quality’ in published content are now useless.” (Read it here.)

His message is more or less the opposite of what I’ve been telling my students at NYU’s Carter Journalism Institute, where I’m now wrapping up a three-year appointment as a visiting professor.

Because the master’s program there lasts three semesters, grad students finish at the end of the calendar year – coinciding in 2008 with massive RIFs at NPR and the New York Times. One of my best and brightest students showed up for our last class sighing, “This is a pretty bleak job market.”

I said, “No, this is way worse than a bad job market. This is a paradigm shift. Those jobs are never coming back.”

Then I delivered a more hopeful message: I thought of myself as a medieval monk whose job it is to keep ancient knowledge alive. That ancient knowledge has to do with things like professional standards, ethics. This was even reflected in the course title: The Medium Formerly Known as Radio. The task of our class was to reinvigorate traditional radio values in the new medium of the Web. My thinking was that someone would figure out how to monetize reporting in its new digital form, journalism would re-professionalize itself, and my students were going to bring about a Renaissance. Sooner rather than later, I hoped.

This wasn’t just a lame attempt to rub a salve over the deep gash they were feeling. After all, they and their families had just dumped untold tens of thousands of dollars on a degree that had almost no hope of landing them a job in their chosen field. Perhaps ever.

The belief underlying my pep talk was that there would always be an audience for vital information gathered and presented with impartiality and craftsmanship. Elowitz argues just the opposite.

Of course, I’m strongest in recounting the past over predicting the future, which is why I became a journalist rather than a fortune teller.

I’m reminded of the standard reply sent to readers who had written letters to the New Yorker magazine in its early days: “Dear Sir. You may be right. Sincerely, Wolcott Gibbs.”

Posted in journalism, new york times, new yorker, radio | No Comments »

Shared with Admiration

Posted on: May 2nd, 2010 by admin No Comments

Skateboardanimation from Tilles Singer on Vimeo.

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It Needed to Be Said

Posted on: April 20th, 2010 by admin No Comments

As mentioned previously, I am jazzed to serve on the advisory board of the new DOC NYC festival. A previous commitment kept me from attending a breakfast held last Friday at the IFC Center to solicit input from influential documentarians. I was happy to to read in filmmakermagazine.com this important reminder from Jem Cohen: “There is a pressure to equate documentary with storytelling, but they are not synonymous.”

Posted in DOC NYC, Documentary, festival, movies, radio | No Comments »

But What About the Olive Haters?

Posted on: April 14th, 2010 by admin 6 Comments

The esteemed food science writer Harold McGhee reminds readers that some humans are genetically predisposed to hate cilantro. We know this already and feel bad for those people.

The untold story is the segment of the population that finds olives repellent. Olive oil poses no problem, but olives themselves – any kind – make us gag.

My personal theory is that this is a genetic remnant from a time when olives were poisonous to some ancestor of Homo sapiens. I’m only half joking.

When friends are planning to cook for me and ask if there’s anything I don’t eat, my stock answer is: “I will eat anything except an olive.” There are foods I don’t like (licorice, for example) but I’ll still eat them to be polite. Olives? No way.

This sometimes causes awkwardness with others. People think at first I am a picky eater. “Just the opposite,” I protest. And then when I go into detail, they are so surprised by what I tell them that I think they don’t believe me.

In my lifetime I’ve only met two others who possess the olive repulsion. Interestingly, they are both from Scotland.

No doubt olivaphobia is a rare trait, and that’s why we haven’t read about it in the Times. Maybe if we took a head count we’d learn there are more of us than anyone realized. Olive haters of the world: leave a comment.

Posted in food, science | 6 Comments »

This Is a Big Effing Deal, Too

Posted on: April 6th, 2010 by admin No Comments

Just days before I head down to Durham, North Carolina, for the Full Frame documentary film festival, I’m excited to report I’m serving on the advisory board of DOC NYC.

It’s a new festival of documentary storytelling – film, radio and beyond – that will launch this fall in New York City.

Read all about it here.

Posted in DOC NYC, Documentary, festival | No Comments »