This weekend Andy Golebiowski interviewed me about my new memoir on his delightful Polish American Radio Program. You can listen to the entire show, and hear some good music, or you can go to minute 42 and just listen to us: https://soundcloud.com/webrradio/sets/the-polish-american-program
People occasionally say that life has become so absurd it’s immune to parody, and it’s usually in reaction to the antics of a celebrity or a politician or the recent, hideous combination of the two – not the contents of the esteemed New York Times. But the Book Review – which every week interviews an author about his or her reading habits – featured this past Sunday Deion Sanders (co-author of a new inspirational book) who said the best book he ever received as a gift was The Little Engine That Could. Asked what three writers, living or dead, he would invite to a literary dinner party, he named as the third his co-author.
I love finding shows to stream that nobody talks about, and the latest is Julie Delpy’s On the Verge. It is a smart, funny look at the lives of four women in their 40s. The fact that one of them – Delpy – is French, adds an interesting perspective.
On the last episode I watched, she is attending her son’s soccer practice and the ball keeps rolling over by her chair. She kicks it back, telling the kids to move farther away. Shortly after, the ball comes flying over and hits her in the face. She gets up and lashes the kids with insults. One of her friends, trying to calm her down, says: “You can’t talk like that to children here.”
Watching that scene it hit me: The show is like a realistic Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's puzzling that Netflix cancelled it after one season.
Yesterday evening, turning from All Creatures Great and Small to Curb Your Enthusiasm, I wondered if there were two more dissimilar shows on television.
I'm featured in the February issue of City & Shore magazine: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2024/02/02/travel-writer-and-editor-thomas-swick-answers-all-of-our-questions/?share=eeama0cerruwwm0tmu2m
WLRN has cancelled Sundial, replacing it with an extra hour of Here & Now. Here & Now is a news program produced by WBUR in Boston, Sundial was a lively and wide-ranging arts & cultural program specific to South Florida. Host Carlos Frias, an excellent writer who had been the food writer for the Miami Herald, proved himself to be a gifted interviewer, bringing a joy and an energy to the show that is rare in public radio. He had as guests people as diverse as film connoisseur Rene Rodriguez, Zoo Miami’s Ron Magill, and the Finnish housecleaner and YouTube sensation Auri Katarina. (Carlos’s interview with Katarina was hilarious, the two of them working in sync like a brilliant comedy team.)
“Keep it local” used to be the media’s mantra. Now, it seems, it’s “keep it cheap.” That would seem to be the only explanation for WLRN’s detrimental actions. Management may argue that these are critical times, and people need to be informed. But they also need to be entertained and enlightened – particularly during anxious times – and nobody entertains and enlightens better than those from the creative realms.