Some Unfortunate Recent Old-Time Radio

I've had a bit of a bad luck streak on my old-time radio podcasts.

The other morning I was out running and listened to a show about a husband who needed money for an operation on his wife. There is only one doctor who can perform the operation. He hooks up with a burglar and they rob a safe. They are interrupted by the homeowner and have to kill him. The husband escapes blame for the murder and has the money for the operation but it turns out the guy he killed…was the only doctor who could perform the operation! The irony!

The I listened to a show about the first trip to the moon, you know in 2000. On the way back everyone is happy except for the wise, old ship's doctor (what is is with ship's doctors?). It seems he was alive in 1945 and saw the first atomic explosion and the craters on the moon look exactly like the crater from the first A-Bomb! (This is not true. Crater from the Trinity test. Moon crater.) He theorizes that there was a civilization on the moon but it was destroyed by an atomic war that left all those craters and burned up all the atmosphere. The rest of the crew begs to differ but the matter is soon settled because just as they are about to land on Earth there is an atomic war that leaves Moon-esque craters and then burns up all the atmosphere.

I'm serious, that was the story.

Morning Run

As you can see above I made a major miscalculation when planning my route for this morning. I finished my intervals at Sixth Avenue a mile away from my apartment. Yeesh! I walk/ran the rest of the way but it was quite a trip. At least I have a new goal to shoot for, running around Prospect Park and making it home.

On the way back I tried to listen to Jonathan Katz's excellent podcast, Hey, We're Back but I kept running into street noise or large construction crews setting up for the day so I couldn't hear Katz, whose voice is subtle even under the best of conditions. If you're somewhere quiet you should check it out.

More Brushing with Greatness

Got an e-mail from my man, Ken Rudin, the Political Junkie himself today. I don't mean to blow my own horn but I called this in July.

Hi Brett,

Wow, this email was more prophetic than anyone could have imagined back
in July. I'm so sorry I never ran it!

Best,

Ken Rudin

-----Original Message-----
From: Brett Sonnenschein
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 3:58 PM
To: PoliticalJunkie
Subject: Super Duper Tuesday

Ken,

Everyone is talking about the Super Duper Tuesday primary as deciding
the nominations in 2008 but what are the odds that it doesn't? Without a
frontrunner with inevitability isn't there are good chance the vote will
be split? In my view most people in later primaries fall behind the
leader rather than voting for the person whose views the most agree
with.

I think it's more likely that Rudy, Romney, Thompson and McCain all win
primaries than one candidate wins most of them. And what if Clinton and
Obama split the Democratic primaries down the middle that day? Do you
think it could happen and if there's no clear front runner and most of
the delegates have been decided what happens next?

Brett Sonnenschein,
Brooklyn, NY

P.S. Next to bagel day at my office "It's All Politics" is the highlight
of my Friday.

Brush With Greatness

Another reason you should be listening to the Daily Bugle podcast is they read my letter this week! I won't tell any more because you should listen to the whole thing but I will tell you I got a "that is pretty good" from Daily Show correspondent John Oliver.

UPDATE: I forgot to thank my man John Oliver for pronouncing my name right. It ain't easy.

Everything I Consume: The Bugle

Pour a glass of egg nog, take a sip of that egg nog, spit that egg nog on the floor and then pour that egg nog out the window.

If you've been missing The Daily Show and The Colbert Report during the writer's strike (and who hasn't?) you can get your dose of Daily Show correspondent John Oliver and partner Andy Saltzman on the weekly podcast The Bugle: Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Christmas to me, John is like a self-assessment tax return. It comes around once a year with the dread inevitability of a car crashing into a bus stop, you always leave it to the last minute, it's ruinously expensive and its always slightly more fun than you anticipate.

It's hilarious and the latest episode is a best of 2007 so you can get right up to speed.

Looking at the environmental state of the world it does seem increasingly clear that it has been designed with built in obsolescence making it very much like a Japanese TV, milk and women.

Everything I Consume: News Podcasts

This morning, like almost every weekday morning I got off the F train at 23rd Street, turned on my iPod and walked up to the street where I heard the NPR 7 AM News Summary lead, like most mornings, with a story about a bombing in Iraq. Podcasts, bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan and 2007 will forever be linked in my mind. Anyway, as I listened, I realized that I get most of my news now from podcasts with the web a close second. Back in college in the 80s they told me the future of news was teletext and we mocked the increasing percentage of the American public that got it's news from TV instead of newspapers and magazines. News from TV, newspapers and magazines? Those are the last place most people look for news today. I only get newspapers on weekends and haven't bought a copy of Time and Newsweek in at least a decade. I can't imagine who still reads weekly news magazines.

But who could have forseen podcasts in 1987? Think of how many steps have we need to get to podcasts. You need widespread internet access, familiarity with software based digital music players, creation of portable hardware-based digital music players and only then do you get podcasts.

I think I'm the one guy under 70 who's still amazed by the internet.

Some other news podcasts I like are:
NY Times Backstory: This is a four to eight minute interview with a Times reporter covering a big story. These upload irregularly but are informative even if the reporters aren't the best interviewees. The reporter covering the Virginia Tech massacre said he was "very happy to be here."
Newsdesk on Guardian Unlimited: A twenty-five minute news podcast from England covering the stories of the day. Obviously, it's UK-focused but still a good listen if only to hear the sultry tones of Ros Taylor reading the news headlines. It doesn't share the anti-Americanism of the Guardian comment boards.
NPR's It's All Politics: A hilarious and informative twelve minutes from NPR's Ken Rudin and Ron Elving. The one place people still talk about Ed Muskie. Highly recommended and worthy of a much longer post.
Washington Week with Gwen Ifil: An informative half-hour taken straight off the TV show. That show must be tough to watch since the podcast is a straight audio pickup and I feel I'm missing nothing. They also do a special five-minute podcast every week of listener questions.

I used to listen to Left, Right and Center but now that I don't I no longer feel homicidal towards Arianna Huffington and Robert Scheer and that's a good thing.

Run, Rabbit, Run

Two and a half months ago I felt like my body was rotting. I was mentally and physically drained from adapting to my second child, my job and a life of hurry up to hurry up. When I got home I would sleepwalk through the evening and then collapse into bed. I have a great the best wife, great the best kids, I like my job but somehow it was all too much.

I decided to start running again and I found help through the Couch to 5K Podcast. It's by Robert Ullrey, a guy from Northern California who decided to start running for his 43rd birthday. The first week was just 20 minutes alternating 60 seconds or running with 90 seconds of jogging. Having a podcast was a huge help because I never would have been able to keep the timing straight. Gradually, the runs built up to week 9 which was three days of 30 minutes of continuous running. Today was the last day. It wasn't easy--the only way I can find time to run is by waking up at 5:15 A.M.--but I stuck with the program and I did it. I think that's how you have to do these thing. That's how I wrote my novel. I found a good plan and stuck to it.

I feel better physically. Even if I've only lost 2 pounds I have more energy, feel happier, and things seem clearer. Mentally, I feel so much more relaxed from having the alone time and confident from having a goal that I picked and accomplished. It's the only way I can get all the stress and nasty images out of my head. For example, this morning I spent the beginning of my run stressing over my job and some family stuff that happened years ago. But somewhere on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade it all cleared away and I found a peace that was worth every every early wake up and shin splint I've ever had or ever will have.

I'm going to stick with the running, I can't imagine not doing it any more. I'm going to do another week or two at 30 minutes, maybe change my route to go over the Gowanus Canal to Park Slope, maybe tackle that hill at the north edge of the Promenade then go up to 35 minutes. Then I'm going to pester Robert Ullrey to do the 5K to 10K podcast.

Thursday Morning

Woke up at 5:15 for my run and started week 6 of my Couch Potato to 5K Running Plan. I recommend it and it's easy to follow using this podcast. I tend to start too fast and burn out so the podcast has been a huge help. There's lots of cheesy dance music in the background but I've gotten kind of numb to that at this point.

Saw a lot of storm damage from last night and I'm sorry I didn't bring my camera. According to NY1 there were 70 MPH winds in Brooklyn Heights. My entire running route was littered with leaves and twigs. At one spot on the Brooklyn Promenade a 10-foot branch had fallen and a 15-footer was almost blocking the Clark Street entrance.

Later this morning I walked my daughter to pre-school and Eagle Eye Gwendolyn saw a snail on the ground. Eventually we found four! Check them out:

I think this guy was dead.



I scared him back into his very nice shell.

You can see the head on this one!


Gwendolyn was all excited to tell her teacher, Zoe, about the snails. Zoe told me she'd been telling the class to look for snails but no one had seen any yet.

That's What She Said Day

Probably won't be posting today because Tuesday is a That's What She Said Day. TWSS is Matt Summer and Ian Casselbury's podcast about NBC's The Office. It's an hour plus of commentary, sound clips of the show including deleted scenes and everything you might possibly wonder about what the Office cast is up to. With the season about to end this is your next-to-last chance to catch it for the year.

If you have any interest in The Office you have to check this podcast out.

See you on the other side.