A Brooke interview with Don Hewitt (when he was alive, of course) is aired this week, but it’s not an adequate substitute. Free Brooke!

At the beginning of this week’s show, Bob suggested that listeners kick back with a glass of whatever suits them. Because I always follow the advice of public radio hosts, I’ve been drinking House Wine red.

It’s cheap red wine, much like the kind Evan Ratliff has been drinking while on the lam. Ok, so the Wired writer isn’t really on the lam – it’s all a contest for Wired magazine. The first person to find Evan wins $5000.

This was by far the most interesting and fun story on the show this week. Sure, health care reform death panels and new newspaper business models are important and all, but sometimes, I just want a few more fun stories about people having a good time with media.

This week’s podcast also features a promo spot for Jesse Thorn’s “Sound of Young America”. Matthew now has me convinced that I’m the only person on earth who doesn’t like Jesse’s show. Am I?

Speaking of shows I don’t like, advertisers are taking their ads off of Glenn Beck’s program because he called President Obama a racist. Fox is till getting their ad dollars, though. It’s an interesting story on hate speech, but it seemed a little long.

I’m realizing as Brooke’s absence continues that I like  OTM best when both hosts are present. The show needs a little back-and-forth and alternating stories to stay compelling. I don’t take my ADD meds on the weekends, so having two voices rotating helps me pay closer attention to the show.

I wonder if the OTM crew has ever considered having a back-up co-host for times like this. Maybe Katya or Nazanin Rafsanjani could fill in a bit, just for variety. Hell, Jad Abumrad sits right down the hall from the OTM crew – maybe he could do it. (Jad fun fact – he grew up in Tennessee.)

This recap was written by Kerry and scowled at by Matthew, who must have some kind of an alliance with Jesse Thorn.

Though we’d love to, we don’t have time to go to the Sufjan Stevens listening party mentioned on PRI’s “Studio 360.”

In Boston, however – and this is the reason for our timing – we’ll be spending the weekend at Megapolis, an audio art festival put together in large part by “Love and Radio’s” Nick Van Der Kolk.

In the meantime, we’re leaving the blog in the capable hands of Zach Whitten, sole proprietor of Brain Release Valve.

The regular content of our two blogs are quite different – but Zach has promised us he would keep our blog’s MPAA rating to an Independent Film R, rather than a Horror Movie R.

But I make no guarantees.

Thankfully, Matt Bloom – an astute NPR listener and one of my best friends – was listening to OTM as soon as the podcast downloaded, and had an opinion. When I asked him, he was all too ready to step up to the plate and write for us. What follows is what he sent me.

thanks,

Matthew

OTM Recap: The Special Dramatic Stepping In of Matt To Relieve the Newly-Engaged Blogger-Couple of Their Recapping Duties Edition

It turns out that when you take a conservative who believes that tax cuts increase revenue and tell him it’s not true, he’s twice as likely to believe it. Also, it appears you need to precede the news that there just ain’t no WMDs in any given foreign country by making sure the member of congress you’re informing knows she’s a stone fox. But that’s not why I agreed to write this.

It wasn’t because Bob used the phrases “total abject world financial collapse” and “post-apocalyptic Mad Max world” – back-to-back – in describing a vision of the future he hoped budding financial journalists could avoid. As sexy as following the money sounds, the 1970s’ porn industry just totally jacked up the meaning of the name “Deepthroat” in the American psyche. And good luck getting college students to watch All the Presidents’ Men without just giggling at the haircuts all the way through. I certainly did.

And no, I wasn’t even inspired by the bitter reality that the more tapping capability our government puts into our communications network, the easier it will be for some Pentagon janitor to hold the entire country hostage with his hand on a lever some day. With the economy tanking into that apocalyptic Mad Max world Bob described, I’d be tempted to demand a few million bucks in exchange for not shutting down every urban power grid in the country myself. (To readers monitoring from Homeland Security: lighten up, I’m kidding, please don’t arrest me.)

Honestly, I agreed to write this recap because I am overjoyed that Brooke Gladstone helped me discover that I am truly a hardcore grammar nerd.

This weekend found my wife listening to OTM in the bathroom as I charged in, screaming profanities at the top of my lungs. When she bade me actually pay attention to what I was hearing, however, I realized that OTM was not praising Sarah Palin for her inane “change/career, career/change” comment. Instead, the informative commentary was quite wonderful.

I’ve had an itch for weeks, and by providing the ailment with a name, I now know what medicine to use on it. The itch’s name is antimetabole, and my medicine is hating the grammatical sins of speechwriters. I’d been making the mistake of hating politicians and it just wasn’t doing the trick. Ahhhh, that’s the spot. Way below JFK, just above Mitt Romney and even localized somewhat in the Obama region. Thanks, Brooke.
Matt Bloom is an author who lives and works in Muncie, Ind. You can find his work at readmattbloom.com.