Kibbles and Bits

As I listen to the very last of the Marc Maron radio shows on Air America radio, I realize that nothing crystallizes your thoughts like listening to similar-minded people articulating their own thoughts on the issues. Marc has talent and surrounds himself with the same caliber of talented people. B-b-b-b-but, he also talks about the issues. Not any issues, but the issues and topics I am interested in.

1. Politics
2. Energy
3. The environment
4. The history and science of comedy
5. Absurdism
6. Pop psychology
7. The mundane - cats, etc
8. Food and music
9. Relationships
10. Paranoia

It will be awhile before anybody else will span these topics as skillfully as Marc and crew will again.

Requiem ("I needed to hear voices and to try to sort out what I was thinking about")

This happens to coincide with Wisconsin Public Radio's cancellation of their weekly broadcast of Harry Shearer's long-running Le Show. Strange how this show disappeared just as Shearer has become more political, with regular mocking of BushCo and lamenting the destruction of his second home of New Orleans (the new "home of the homeless"?).

What us connoisseurs of radio comedy have left resembles nothing more than the corporate crap that permeates our workspaces. Stuff that in the immortal dialogue of Shearer's Spinal Tap, all the dignity of choking to death on vomit -- actually, someone else's vomit. That always happens when you work for the man. As bloggers, we don't have to worry about someone pulling the rug from underneath us. How else to explain why this treatment of Maron and Shearer bothers me so much?

Game over, man. Goodnight sheeple. Uh-huh.