To all of you couples now eligible for tax breaks and a bureaucratically-recognized thing for one another, I’m raising the drinks I’m double-fisting. A toast to you, from one of the most awesome – and non-hetero-normative bands ever – The Magnetic Fields.

Also raising the drinks is “This American Life.” On their newly redesigned website, you can find the episode, “81 Words,” a beautiful and fascinating story about how the American Psychological Association decided – because, apparently, a group of old white straight men can just decide this sort of thing – that homosexuality is not a disease.

Here’s a glass raised, from one white married straight man to everyone getting married, be you the same or otherwise. I wish you the absolute best in life.

After about 45 repetitive minutes of:

“Jeremy?”

“Yes, Mr. Trisler?”

“Sit. Down.”

Two ideas struck me:

1. Never do this again.
2. If the problem is that he won’t be quiet, use that to humiliate the kid.

The brilliant thing about that second idea is that it worked.

"Under Pressure" by goran konjevod on Flickr

I made Jeremy (or whatever his name was), go to the front of the class and give a speech about something he knew nothing about. I think I made his topic something like “The Distribution of Causational Philosophies Among the Space-Time Matrix, As Outlined in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice.’”

It didn’t actually humiliate him – which feels good to me in an ethical sense – but it gave him the attention he wanted, in a sanctioned – and therefore, much less disruptive – manner, and suddenly turned me into everybody’s favorite sub. Which wasn’t what I planned, but I’m not about to complain.

Every class I had for the rest of the day begged me to do the same for them. I highly recommend this technique to any teacher struggling to rein in an unruly loudmouth kid.

But, since no scientific theory is proven until the evidence is repeated, I present you with Act Two of this last week’s “This American Life,” called “Lewis Time,” in which student, loudmouth, and lovable scamp Lewis de la Cruz turns his school life around after his teachers implement something very similar to (and maybe actually funnier than) the impromptu speeches I made my students give.

"Alberto Gonzales on line 2...." by Vaguely Artistic, Flickr.

It’s more or less like his stuff on “This American Life,” with his sense of humor shifting rapid between wry and dry. (With a voice and delivery like his, it’s hard to believe his sense of humor to be anything but wry and/or dry.)

The production of the show is fantastic – “WireTap” sounds like what would happen if Ira Glass hired Nick Van der Kolk from “Love and Radio” as a producer.

By which I mean two things:

1. It sounds approachable and familiar, but with an underlying sense of unsettling avant garde absurdity.
2. Awesome.

(Seriously, can someone get Nick to produce a segment for “This American Life?” Even if they just use the Lady Sovereign episode?)

One of the greatest things that Goldstein brought over from This American Life is the random clip from the middle of the show. Glass & co. use it to cram words into the mouth of Torey Malatia, but the genius twist that Goldstein employs is to release those clips as mp3 ringtones.

Just like this one: WireTap: Lucky Lady

Also, the first time I noticed, really noticed Goldstein was on this TAL episode, “Special Treatment,” wherein his friend Howard reminds me uncannily of a good friend of mine from high school.

This effect is most pronounced when the person talking needs to explain the relevance of the subject. One of the greatest strengths of “Planet Money” is that the show’s staff is learning along with the rest of us. They’re able to explain in layman’s terms why news is important because they’re laymen themselves.

You’ll notice that “Marketplace” doesn’t take this tack. They assume you already know why almost any story having to do with money is important – money, after all, makes the world go round.

That’s great for people who already know a lot about money, just as the “Writer’s Almanac” is great for people who already care about literature, but neither program does a damn thing to explain why their subject is important, let alone bring you up to speed if you’re coming around.

Normally, Brooke, Bob, and everyone on the “On the Media” staff does a remarkable job of clueing the listener in on why their stories are interesting and relevant. Which means I need to expand a little bit on something I said last night.

I said both “the story tends to drone on into one of Bob’s favorite topics” and “Brooke, too, falters a little bit (to my ears) when talking about one of her favorite topics.”

Sadly, when they get to report on stories that they’re passionate about the result is lackluster – though their enthusiasm shines through, their real strength lies in getting us to care. When the host already cares passionately about their subject, it’s easy to forget that the audience doesn’t automatically agree.

I know that I’m not innocent of this. I like serious poetry, and I care deeply about the craft and literary criticism. But if I start talking about it to Kerry without illustrating why it’s important to the conversation, I’m met with either a blank stare or the sentence “stop being pretentious.”

Nevermind that pretentiousness implies to me a sense of forced superiority, not the excited feeling of “hey, I really like talking about this, let’s talk about this, come on, let’s go!”

Public radio – when you get past the smooth and smarmy voices – is full of people like me, who are curious and eager to just explore the world, figure out how it fits together, and to learn why that’s important. And it’s at its best when it’s slightly out of its area of expertise.

Brooke,

I’m sorry about that gushy voicemail I sent. Sort of. The sentiment behind it was sincere, if strong enough to be a little embarassing.

Anyway, Kerry and I are both extremely grateful to you and everyone at WNYC for scoring us the tickets. We didn’t expect it at all.

I’d love to tell you all about the show, but it’s been posted already.

I’d love to show you pictures, but I didn’t want to be the guy taking pictures of the show instead of watching it. The only one I even tried was extremely blurry, and I didn’t want to try again.

Thankfully, This American Life posted some photos of their own.

Like this one, where, if you click through to Flickr and view it big, and then probably squint some, you can see us slightly to the left of the center of the 8th row back:

The whole thing was really great. Ira Glass was predictably charming. Mike Birbiglia was predictably hilarious. Dan Savage unexpectedly made us all cry. (Except for the part where I had a terrible coughing fit right when he got to the REALLY serious part.)

Starlee Kine was charming too. I was expecting that. I wasn’t expecting her to be actually kinda cute. I had kind of a big crush on her before, but her piece about family aggression therapy (it’s hard to figure out exactly how to explain) sealed it for me.

Between my thing for Starlee Kine and Kerry’s thing for Dan Pashman, I’m sure I speak for both of us when I say I’m a little relieved we decided to just exclude public radio personalities from our lists of free-pass-affair famous people.

But I digress.

It was completely unnecessary – but completely awesome – for you to go out of your way to find those tickets for us.

Our minds will never cease to be blown that you even know about us two kids fawning from Tennessee.

Thanks again. We’ll never be able to top that vacation. I just probably should have stuck with Kerry’s choice of words and said “I heart you” instead.

- matthew

Matt and Kerry are off in New York, or Boston, or some place where it hasn’t gotten hot enough to fry people’s commonsense yet. My name is Zachary Whitten. I run a seedy little corner of the Internet called the Brain Release Valve. I try to keep up with the zeitgeist and the horror show that we call human culture. I’m the man who married the Radio Sweethearts, and in retribution, they’ve given me the keys to this place and told me to make it go.

(Matt, I’ll never forgive you for making me type that password to post this.)

Now, this is a task I’m approached with much consternation. I told the R/S kiddies that I wouldn’t go off on one of my obscenity laced tirades about the death of whatever-the-hell. This was a problem since I, at best, am an over-educated one-trick pony that does little else but yell things and drink all the booze in the place. I haven’t posted anything yet because I didn’t know what to post. My reliance on dropping the F-bomb or talking about people’s predilections to mangle their genitalia had paralyzed me.

Then, a ray of light came down from the heaven to help show me the way. Well, not literally. I don’t do those kind of drugs anymore. The ray of light was a phone call from a foul mouthed Southern belle, and the way was a Fresh Air story she was listening to about Joe Shuster’s work on a series of fetish comic books in the 1950s. But this was good, since I was eying a bottle of whiskey at the moment she called and considering getting completely blotto and writing a screed about my man-crush on Kai Ryssdal. (Don’t you judge me.)

My scatologically obsessed muse had come through in the moment when I needed her most. Terry Gross was lending her dulcet tones to the interview of one Craig Yoe. Turns out that Yoe had just published a book examining the work that Joe Shuster did for a series of S&M/horror comics called Nights of Horror.

Shuster, for those that have that nagging thread in the back of their heads that they know the name but can’t quite place it, was half of the team of Siegel and Shuster. They created the most important property in comic book history – Superman.

Yoe’s book is a mix of “history and speculation” as he puts it. There is definite, factual history about Shuster, comic books, and the world at large in the 1950s, but there is also a lot of speculation. No one really knows why Shuster worked on these under-the-counter sex books. Some people think it is because he was dead broke and needed the money. Some think it was to get back at DC for shorting him on merchandising rights to Superman. It is all just speculation, though. It is impossible to point to a reason and definitively go “This is why.”

In the interview, Gross goes right for the metaphorical throat of the story, getting Yoe to describe the content and character of these drawings with lovely bits like “…a man menaces a young girl with a cactus, and there is the pouring of red ants down another young lady’s panties.” Then a pause, and a moment where he says, “I could be more explicit.”

I swear at that instant you can hear every comic book nerd and closet deviant leaning over in their chair and going “Oh…really?”

For a while, Yoe and Gross circle around the similarities between the visuals in a Nights of Horror book and a Superman book. Yes, Superman looks like the guy chained to a bed. Yes, the women either abusing or being abused look like Lois Lane and Lana Lang. But, the inferences they are trying to draw that maybe Shuster was trying to get back at DC are stretches at best. As some one who’s worked with character development and artists, it is far easier to copy something previously done into a new setting than it is to start from scratch. The characters look similar because it was easier for Shuster to do.

After getting the baseline discussion of the book out of the way, Gross turns the interview toward the events that were going on in the world while Shuster worked on Nights of Horror. Specifically, the Brooklyn Thrill Kill murders and the ensuing crusade against comic books. They talk about how the murders eventually lead to a Supreme Court ruling where even the ACLU sided against the publishers of Nights of Horror. The Court ordered the books destroyed immediately, which is why Yoe’s discovery of this work is so interesting.

Wrappings things up, Gross and Yoe discuss the permeating nature of fetishism in the 50s. Gross points out how all of the Westerns had women bound and gagged, then Yoe talks about how the comedies of the day had spanking scenes. Coming back to super-heroes, Yoe drives home the point when he talks about that super-heroes are beings above us; inherently the dom in the sub/dom relationship.

This whole discourse between the two of them is unintentionally humorous for me, because never once did they entertain the notion that Shuster might have enjoyed what he was doing. The fact that Shuster might have been kinky is the elephant in the room for the whole interview. It is commonly accepted that the creator of Wonder Woman based the character off his S&M bondage fantasies, why is it so hard to think the same thing about one of the creators of Superman?

Oh, Christ, this just short of a thousand words about Superman porn, isn’t it? Maybe I should have just gotten bladdered and talked about how Kai Ryssdal is dreamy, even if he might be just a little smarmy. Well, at least I got through the whole thing without threatening anyone with a spiny appendage.

Matt and Kerry will be back on Sunday. I might write something else tomorrow. But now, I have to go root through their mail.

You can find the Fresh Air interview with Craig Yoe here.

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.

As much as I like the work that happens when they work together, it throws me off when both programs make use of that work. Like the discussion of John Maynard Keynes. It appeared in both the January 30th “Planet Money” and the the January 30th “This American Life.”

I point this out not to criticize, but instead just to mention that I noticed it. In a very low-level way, when I was walking around on my lunch break today, listening to old podcasts.

I had almost gotten hit by a car, because I was paying too much attention to “This American Life,” but rather than turn it off, I just stopped paying attention. Survival instincts and learning instincts are not necessarily the same thing.

Then suddenly, it occurred to me that I had heard this conversation before. Which made me pay full attention again, until I remembered where I’d heard it.

It makes sense, really, that they would both use a segment produced together. Particularly when, as in this case, it’s a good segment. I like learning about the actual lives of the people who are in the news, particularly when someone, like Keynes, is no longer among the living.

Happy New Year’s. Let’s fix what’s broken, and make the most of it. 2009 will be what we make of it.

I have been obsessed for years with the musical phenomenon known as song-poems.

Song-poems were a semi-scam that ran for a while from the late 50’s to the late 70’s. People would write lyrics to songs and pay services to put them to music and record the song. The budding lyricists were then sent the 45 RPM single of the resulting songs. Read a few of the above articles for an explanation of why it was a scam.

“This American Life” has a story posted about one of the men who wrote the music for these songs. It’s act three in its episode. The story is called “Reverb.”

The reason I bring this up is that we’ve been looking for a way to raise money to keep this blog going – and any money we raise after our expenses are taken care of will be money we donate back to public radio.

We’re strongly considering writing song-poems as a gift in exchange for donations. We haven’t set the price yet, partly because we’re still trying gauge the demand.

So, for a few days, I’m opening this email address for song-poem submissions. The first three people will have their (hopefully terrible) lyrics set to (hopefully hilariously terrible) music for free. Genre suggestions will be considered, but likely ignored.

Go for it.

Keep in mind a few things: the spirit of this little project is fun, but taking your lyrics too seriously can result in some hilariously awful results. Which is why I reccomend mining your teenage journals and diaries for material.

Also, please keep in mind that by submitting material, you are giving us the rights to use the song however we want, in perpetuity (though we will release under Creative Commons).

For a couple ideas of how song poems can go, here’s a couple of my favorites:

The good:

Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Potassium

The bad:

Jimmy Carter says Yes

The ugly:

Green Fingernails