OK Glass
by Scott Hardie on September 18, 2014
Last weekend, Kelly and I drove up to St. Petersburg with friends to see Ira Glass present a one-man stage show explaining how he makes This American Life on the radio. I had no prior familiarity with his work, having not heard the radio show unlike the fans that I went with, but I think it's long past time that I started listening to the celebrated series online.
Glass talked about how he studied semiotics in college, and that made a lot of sense: He approaches the radio show not like a journalist, but like a storyteller, using structure rather than content to build the audience's interest. He broke down some of his most famous episodes and explained how he organized them to build mysteries in the mind of the listener and establish universal connections to the people in the tale. I'm absolutely going to start applying his lessons to my own storytelling.
The stage show was frequently funny -- Glass has the skills to be a comedian, if not the psychopathology -- but for the cost of the tickets, I guess I expected more. It was over so soon, after Glass explained maybe four aspects about how his show works, and there was no visual element to the show other than Glass just walking around the stage, gesturing as he talked. The radio show has zero visual component, so I thought maybe the stage show would project images onto a screen or bring out some props or something to differentiate it. The stage show did include several requests to donate to the local NPR member station, so it was like the radio in that sense.
Even though stage show itself was not very good despite some laughs, I'll be glad that I went if it gets me listening to the backlog of This American Life online and gets me to approach storytelling in a new way.
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
The Time Has Come
My kingdom for an alarm clock that beeps once, gently, 60 seconds before it really begins going off. That way you're woken up comfortably and given a chance to turn it off, instead of being startled awake by loud shrieking and having to scramble for it. Go »Pass Me the Green, I Need Some Trees with My Tennessee
Kelly and I just took a short vacation to Gatlinburg: Two days there, with two full days of driving to make it happen. We've been itching to get out of the house during this awful pandemic (and to use Kelly's PTO before it expires), but with options limited for places to go safely, we realized that we could rent a cabin with family and just go hiking and birdwatching and grilling, avoiding crowds in favor of natural spaces. Kelly's immediate family from Illinois drove over to join us. Go »WLW: Here's What You Do
No kooky doctor stories this week, as I've been left to my own care, or should I say, the care of everyone around me. I don't want to sound ungrateful, because I'm sincerely glad that people care about me enough to offer advice. It's just, there's a LOT of advice, from all directions, at the drop of a hat, and much of it conflicts with other advice. Go »Day 14
In lieu of "weight loss Wednesday" since I'm much too busy on Wednesdays even to get online, let me write today that I'm on day 14 of a new diet, which is 13 more days than nearly all of my attempts last. This is, in fact, the second-longest I've ever lasted on a diet, and in a few weeks it will be the longest. This should indicate how lousy my self-discipline is and why I've ballooned to this size, around 450 pounds. Go »iMenus
I think we just experienced the future of restaurants. I thought that once before, and it turned out to be true, but in that case the trend was years late coming to Sarasota after large cultural centers like New York and Los Angeles. We might be a few years behind on this new trend as well, but I still see it becoming commonplace. Go »
