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A Playful Parody


(Old Farmhouse by Mc Morr )

This morning, like a lot of Americans, I woke up to National Public Radio. Midway along as my coffee steeped in the french press, I heard this essay “Discovering a Mother’s Hidden Talent” from Storycorps, an oral history project that I always enjoy.

I knew Rene would be listening, at work, this morning as well, and I thought. I’m going to parody this thing. I know she’ll catch the reference. So, after checking my email, and seeing a note from her, asking if I would bring in her belt, I wrote this:

You need me to bring your belt into work? Sure. I’d be glad to.

That reminds me of a story. It was 1962 in rural Appalachia. My overalls kept falling down to my knees. We were dirt poor, and inbred. Our opportunities were few, if any.

But I woke up one morning in our clapboard cabin, the icy wind cutting through my pj’s like a whip, and there, next to my threadbare jeans, my momma had brought a belt down from one of the high hooks in the barn. And at the end of the decrepit leather strap was a gleaming silver buckle. My dear departed poppa’s buckle - all that was left after his tragic juggling while threshing incident.

So that’s why, even today, when someone asks for me to bring them a belt, a tear comes to my eye.

… you can hear this, and other stories in the book “Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project” or online at NPR.org.

2008 01 04 John Tynan Comments (2)

Learning Radio by Negative Example

This weekend, I learned something about writing for broadcasting. These principles were told to me several times, like most headstrong, fledgling radio reporters, I had to make this mistake on my own. And boy, it was a mistake. I was writing a segment of a podcast for NaNoWriMo and after I had polished the second draft, I send it around for people to listen.

In a quick IM session with Rene, she wondered why I wasn’t telling this story through a narrative. She said I didn’t really have a “story”. And that I only had the pattern: ABC / ABC / ABC / ABC.

I had told her two days prior, that I needed to make my own mistakes, and that’s just what I went ahead and did. I made the mistake of thinking about writing for radio in terms of writing a five paragraph essay. But I couldn’t just take her word for it that that’s what I had done. I remembered Ira Glass’ presentation from several weeks ago at the Scottsdale Center for the arts, wherein, he said explained his theory for writing for broadcasting is about writing anecdotes:

So, to fix this. Rene sat me down and helped me to transform this script for Draft 2. Notice how the highlighted text all are in alternating colors? This is because each color is a different interviewee. Rene then had me realign all the ACTs in the next Draft 3 so that I am only talking about one person at a time. See how the colors are arranged in large blocks? Rene also had me re-recording all my TRXs. And then Rene remixed the audio (while I went to my grandfather’s 99th birthday) and then, when I got home, what came out of this exercise was a completely different story using essentially the same clips. Have a listen.

 
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2007 12 10 John Tynan publicbroadcasting Comments (2)

My Piano Tuner

In addition to taking great care of my piano, my piano tuner/technician has an amazing take on his work. This story was written for bsideradio.org and produced with care by Tamara Keith. Rene added some real sparkle at the end with her performance of a piece by Kabalevsky.

 
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2007 04 16 John Tynan Comments (0)

My Fake Hair Replacement Ad

Awhile back, as part of a commentary I did for b-side on shaving my head, I asked Steve, my co-worker, to play the part of a person making a testimonial in a late-night hair replacement ad. I created the cheezy background music using ACID, Sony’s loop based music tool, then put the two together in Adobe Audition. Kind of a fun exercise, and Steve did a great job. I thought this would be a good first test of the PodPress plugin for WordPress and it looks like this software will work just right.

 
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2007 03 29 John Tynan Comments (0)

Spam is (not) for lovers

This past weekend, Rene had a story on the Splendid Table. It all started as a joke, a parody of This American Life and was meant to be more an exercise in interviewing each other than anything else — the idea of getting at a conversational interview style being more the point than the actual subject, which was kind of an ordinary event. We came up with the idea for the story while driving to Sedona for vacation, then recorded the audio the next morning simply for fun. Then the minidisk gathered dust for over a year. Last month, Rene sat down one weekend and put it together just for fun. Then the story came to life in its own way.The folks at the Splendid Table did a great job introducing the story. They chose the music at the start of the piece and it just sets everything up just right.

You can listen here. (It’s about 1/3 of the way into the show… I’m not quite sure where).

Enjoy!

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2007 03 28 John Tynan Comments (0)

Hail Spam!

(Photo Credit: Luis Perez)
(Photo Credit: Luis Perez)

Sometimes I can be such a dork. That’s forgivable, or at least forgettable. My flaw is that I’m not afraid to talk about it. Wait! No. my flaw is that I’m not afraid to talk about it into a microphone.

Even about the most mundane stuff. Just like Brendan or Andy was saying during the Social Media 201 session at ima2007… “People’s opinions aren’t interesting. People’s stories are.” Like in this radio story where I remember standing at the screen door, afraid to step into my own house because I cheaped out and, quite literally, didn’t bring home the bacon.

Listen to this story by Rene Gutel.

 
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2007 02 24 John Tynan publicbroadcasting Comments (0)