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Something wonderful, but that I also have mixed feelings about, has happened this week here in Western Massachusetts AM radio. With no warning that I heard (as you may have noticed is the way this usually happens), the local sports talk radio station, this past Monday, became . . . an NPR station! How often have you ever heard of anything like that happening?!
I rejoice at this, and especially at the noon hour, when I imagine some of Jim Rome’s legion of lunkhead “clones” (what he calls his army of listeners) tuning in and, instead of their hero (watch the video and judge for yourself), oh this is just soooo great, they get:
TERRY GROSS!
But, herein lies the rub: the mystery of my sports-talk drivetime habit continues to baffle me, as I also miss it, sometimes I miss it a lot. I miss radio I hate. I miss screaming at it. I sometimes even tune in to the barely hearable above the static. 1050 all the way from NYC to hear Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann in the afternoons. (as I’ve said before, Dan and Keith are an unbelievable breath of fresh air in the sports journalism world.)
But imagining a "clone" tuning in to find Fresh Air?: priceless.
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Off topic again, here, but, after nearly on the shelves, my book, Bo’s Arts, has received some national press, in the wonderful and wonderfully apt "Bitch Magazine." If you don’t know "Bitch," it’s subtitled "Feminist Resonse to Pop Culture" and it rocks. Here’s what they wrote:
Bitch Magazine, Spring 2007
Some dogs are stars, like Lassie. Others are cult figures, like San Francisco mutt Bo, the somewhat aloof pit bull-cocker spaniel mix who inspired the latest offering from the mighty Evil Twin empire. Bo’s Arts collects the work of 41 artists who in 2004 painted, photographed, and in some cases employed the sheddings of Bo in an art show that, in celebrating one dog, also celebrated an essential, enduring dogginess. Scattered throughout are the musings of Bo’s
owner, Jamie Berger: on the subject of people assuming a dog named Bo must be male, he relates, "I have a compulsive need to correct, ‘It’s a she,’ or, ‘She’s a girl’ . . . . And then I think, ‘Not a girl, woman, she’s a grown dog.’ But people will really think I’m some psycho doggie feminist if I say, in all earnestness, ‘Actually, she’s a woman dog.’" Good dog, good guy, good book.
-Andi Zeisler
