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.

It’s gotten to the point that the rumors themselves have become an more important news story than what they might be about or whether they’re true.

If the rumors are the news, how do you report them while making sure that Paterson’s “alleged misconduct” doesn’t get shortened to “misconduct?” Well, we just use the word “alleged.”

The difference between "alleged misconduct" and "misconduct" is that we KNOW Fleetwood Mac all slept with one another in a bed made of pure cocaine.

But this story is more complicated than that. Gov. Paterson hasn’t been accused of anything. His ‘alleged misconduct’ hasn’t been alleged yet – the rumors are merely that the New York Times is going to publish a story laying those rumors bare.

What that means is this: David Paterson, governor of the state of New York, is under fire for rumored alleged misconduct.

WTF, news media, WTF?

At least “All Things Considered” has the decency and wherewithal to report the story as it is and investigate how it got that way. It even includes this truly classic public radio line: “This truly is the scandal that dare not say its name — because nobody really knows what the heck it is.”

It’s a perfect walk on the balance beam between reporting rumors and sussing out why we love rumors.

The lesson I’ve learned from NPR’s story? More questions.

• Can we please wait for something to become a story before making these premature ejaculations of reportage into a completely new story?
• Or has the New York Times succumbed to the same pathetic tactic of terrible Hollywood blockbusters and cult TV shows?
• Are they building undeserved hype in the name of selling papers?
• Are they trying to sex up their political coverage?

I know times are rough for newspapers, but I’m not so sure that hiking up the Gray Lady’s skirt is the way to fix it.

Gross expected him to be as outrageous as his reputation (and his character on “30 Rock”). Instead, when he wanted to be vulnerable and talk about his painful childhood, she took that as a signal to keep asking him painful questions and then gasping in disbelief when he got choked up and began to cry.

At one point, it even sounds like she’s laughing at him for crying – which, even though I’m willing to believe Gross’ laughter was largely a manifestation of discomfort, sounds remarkably cruel.

Out of respect for Morgan, and out of distaste for Gross’ handling of the interview, I’m not going to link to that story. You know how to find it, anyway.

Instead, what I am going to link to is the greatest “Fresh Air” interview ever. So great, in fact, that I can’t actually link you to audio from the interview on NPR.org. Or a transcript. This is Terry Gross’ great lost interview.

So great that when the interviewee asks Terry Gross, “Don’t you love this interview? Tell me the truth,” she does tell the truth: “Well, I think it’s kind of a drag, because you’re making speeches, and being intentionally obnoxious.”

And then she erupts in nervous laughter as he continues hitting on her, insulting everyone and offering some tips to give NPR some serious style.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you – unearthed direct from the fiery vaults of Hell – all 26 harrowing minutes, 54 incendiary seconds of: Terry Gross of “Fresh Air” versus:

GENE

CHAIM EVER LOVING WITZ?! WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN EATING?!

SIMMONS!

(Of rock band Kiss, as if you didn’t already know.)

Seriously, it’s amazing, and will explain this post’s title in more detail than you ever cared for.

"Truck Vs Macbook Pro" by Jase n tonic

In the middle of an otherwise sane conversation about computer programs that construct news stories as search engine fodder, Bob – unprovoked – begins shouting nonsense.

This is the second time that I’ve ever pulled a clip out of a radio show for discussion here. I hope it’s the last time I need to do this with Bob:

“Take that, Computers! Only humans can write poetry!”

I want you to notice some things about this outburst:

1. Notice the slurred voice. Not so much in, “Take that, Computers!” but in “Only humans can write poetry!” Either Bob’s coffee is in need of a sniff-test, 0r he found an old Quaalude stash. Or his mind is slipping.

2. Notice that the interviewee, like a good radio guest, repeats what he was saying before he was interrupted – which means the crazy could have been edited out.

3. The crazy could have been edited out, and “On the Media,” as we have teased them before, is edited… by Brooke. Brooke left that in there for a reason.

Kerry and I conferred on the possible motivations for such actions: maybe there’s a bet as to who can sell the most books. Maybe Bob is really just going that crazy from having his love for Brooke go unrequited for so long.

Or maybe – and this is my preferred theory – Bob has just discovered that the government-issued rations, provided by the Soylent Corporation, are actually processed from the bodies of humans who have either become to aged to contribute to a starved society or who just have t0o difficult a time living so far below the poverty line. But now that he knows, he must, at all costs, risk his job with the police force to let the world know that it’s people! Soylent Green is people! You must tell them, oh the humanity!

That, or Brooke just wanted her intelligent, well thought out piece on Nabokov’s unfinished novel to sound even more reasoned and insightful than it would have otherwise. Which, holy crap, would sound reasoned and insightful anyway – she insists that a literary critic justify the fact that he considers Kafka to be an exception to an arbitrary rule.

By the way, I’ve always pronounced “Nabokov” “Nab-0-KAV,” whereas Brooke pronounces it “Na-BOK-off.” Who’s right? And who, other than the Nabokov family decides that?

This “On the Media” Highlights post was written by Matthew, for once in the presence of Kerry, who, while hearing Matthew edit the clip above, just sighed, “Thank God there’s an us, protecting public radio from itself.”

I remember using my limited computer time at my dad’s house to pull as many songs from Napster as possible, then burning them to CDs that are still in my old desk at my mom’s house. Things have come a long way since 1999, but people still don’t want to pay for something that they can get so easily for free and record labels still don’t know what to do about it.

In this week’s story about how music is charted, Mark Phillips points out that there’s been an upswing in the purchase of records  by middle-aged people. It seems like he’s trying to say that only said middle-aged people are still buying physical CDs. That’s not the case – I think those charts just measure what CDs are currently for sale at the Starbuck’s register.

I pay for music. Matthew and I both have subscriptions to eMusic, an awesome (and affordable) mp3 subscription service. Currently, we have about 450 vinyl records between us (a number that will likely continue to rise, especially after we get better speakers). We go to shows. But sometimes, I pull a track or two from hypemachine to test out a new band.Usually, if the band is good, I buy the record.

This week’s show also tackles a question that’s been on my mind for the last year: how exactly has GirlTalk not gotten sued yet?

This week’s On the Media is a departure from the show’s normal format. It’s hosted by Rick Carr, who does a pretty decent job until the sign off. Where Bob sounds all adorable and lovesick while sighing Brooke’s editing credit, Rick Carr just comes off as creepy. Or mocking. Or like he’s got Bob shoved into a locker somewhere.

This recap was written by Kerry, who’s back to her normal posting duties after two weeks of work travel. It was edited, sort of, by Matthew, who provided lots of colorful interjections while the podcast was on.

What’s notable about the song, other than the fact that the story is panned hard left and the music is panned hard right, is that it – along with a couple after-the-fact movies about Andy Warhol (namely, “I Shot Andy Warhol”), the song includes the only instance of my favorite slang word ever – “modern,” meaning “bland and/or stuffy.”

And not necessarily “stuffy” meaning “stiffly banal,” either, but occasionally referring to humidity – at one point, a character comes inside, shakes her head, and sighs, “Ugh; it’s positively modern outside.”

It’s a fantastic way to so completely subvert the actual Modernist period, which was so focused on taking the old and making it vigorously new. I love the ideological violence in declaring the Modern flaccid.

Which is why I’m loving Neda Ulaby’s nitpicking at the use of the word “modern” in reality TV shows. They use it to mean, “new” and “current.” The problem, she reports, seems to be that the more accurate “contemporary” is viewed with the same lazy contempt that Cale’s characters uttered the word “modern.”

Confused by my words about words? Simply put, it seems that the contemporary sentiment is that “contemporary” is positively modern, so something fresh needs to be used. In the interest of vitality, they’ve dug up “modern,” a dead word about a (somewhat) dead art movement from the first part of the century.

In related news, it seems that I’ve chosen to write about a Neda Ulaby story about once a week for the last month and a half.

I wonder if its her or whoever assigns her stories who’s my journalism soulmate.

But the most telling part of the sign off is the rather giddy, almost tears-of-joy sounding announcement that Brooke Gladstone will be back next week. I wonder if Bob is counting down the days like I did when I was in long distance relationships in college. Maybe, like my long distance boyfriend, he’ll take a long shower, clean his apartment  and trim his nosehairs in anticipation.

I wonder where Katya was this week. I hope she was on vacation – she totally deserves one.

Bob tried to adjust us to Brooke’s return by playing one of her old stories about undercover reporting. I hadn’t heard it before, so I didn’t mind the rerun. After a debate about the ethics of undercover reporting, most of the story is about Ted Conover‘s undercover work at Sing Sing. It really just makes me want to read his book “New Jack”.

This story from Brooke is like a wire mother. Sure, Bob’s stories this week provide nutritional information, but Brooke adds the warm loving touch. This had better be a damn good book she’s writing. Knowing her, it totally will be.

This recap was written by Kerry, who tried to get Matthew to write a paragraph of it. He didn’t.

This week, Brooke and Bob pull an Adam and Jamie and turn into cultural myth busters. I wonder who’s who – Matthew and I can’t quite figure it out. On the one hand, Brooke is a task master (like Jamie), but she also seems like she’d be a fan of blowing things up for radio (like Adam). Bob seems like he can be a little difficult (and possible mustachioed, like Jamie), but he also seems like he would be the one trying to make lab skeletons act out silly sketch comedy shows (like Adam). Thoughts? Who would look better in a beret?

Anyway – the episode was about common myths and the debunking thereof. I like it when they center the show around a central theme – it makes my (now medicated) ADD-addled brain pay closer attention.

I think most of the segments on this week’s show are re-runs, but I can’t tell because they’re packaged in a themed episode. I definitely feel like I’ve heard this story about the bystander effect and the Kitty Genovese murder before. Same goes for this one on the Bradley effect.

Also this week, the re-airing of a story by Fred Kaplan (Brooke’s real life sweetheart) about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the truth about Rosa Parks, and why some people refuse to believe that Barack Obama isn’t a Muslim.

This (rather short) recap was written by Kerry, who is sitting on her desk rather than at it, and challenged by Matthew, who’s holding an old school Nintendo.

We’ve been trying to unpack, but the thing is, most of our boxes are packed tigher than an easy game of Tetris, and wait, what’s that you say?

The featured story on this week’s “On the Media” is about Tetris?

What a coincidence! I love Tetris! It’s a major contributor to the fact that college took me two tries. It’s also a major contributor that I once moved everything I ever owned in one trip in a minivan (with the seats in the car and up), and why I’m finding it difficult to unpack certain boxes. I’m really wishing that, in life as in Tetris, I could complete a line and have it vanish.

But I digress.

Bob Garfield gets to interview Alexey Pajitnov, the Russian programmer who invented Tetris.

Do I even really need to specify that he’s a Russian programmer? Pajitnov invented Tetris. That’s like calling Dostoyevski a Russian novelist or Tchaikovsky a Russian composer or Badenov a cartoon Russian spy. I mean, we know. It’s obvious.

I assumed for years that the Tchaikovsky-esque music that plays and plays and plays while the blocks fall from the sky were a) actually Tchaikovsky and b) the Soviet National Anthem.

It’s an awesomely geeky interview, and both Bob and Pajitnov geek 0ut about Pong – Bob mentions an embarassed love for Pong, and Pajitnov pats him on the back to say, Yes, my Western capitalist friend. Me too. Only in Soviet russia, Pong, it plays you.

Okay, so that was stupid. And it’s the last time I’ll do that. But the game sort of did play Pajitnov. Glasnost wasn’t glas-enough for the programmer, and in order to get Tetris published, he basically had to donate his rights to the game for ten years to friggin’ Elorg or whoever it was who wrote those painfully long legal warnings that showed when you turned on your Nintendo.

So even though Pajitnov did invent the most addictive game this side of Klondike Solitare, he’s not rich, even by the dirty chic mid-80′s Moscow middle class standards.

There’s no conclusion here, except that my hand, too, extends out to both Bob and Pajitnov. My name is Matthew Crawford-Trisler, and I, too, love Pong.

Now, all of that rambling is by way of glossing over pretty much the entire episode. There’s a story about Iran’s “elections”, one about the Boston Globe. There’s a particularly good repeat story. And the TV Digital Switch. Which I could care less about. I listen to the radio like normal kids watch TV.

Brooke was out this week, which means that the lovely Katya Rogers was left to edit the show. Bob sounded disappointed while announcing this. Which is sad. We know he’s way into Brooke and everything, but Katya’s cute. And amazingly sweet.

And crazy talented at the mixing boards.

We’ve been in their studio; I know. Their mics are nothing fancy. (I could use the model number off the Shure that Brooke uses, by the way.) Katya keeps ‘em (our hosts) sounding like they’re in the room with you. It’s impressive, and she deserves a few crushes headed her way.

Today’s OTM Recap was written by Matthew and edited in spirit, if not in body, by Kerry.

In Pajitnov’s words, “Yes, and thank you for having me at your show.”

That’s cool, I guess. I haven’t really had time to sit down and figure her out. But today’s “All Things Considered” interview with Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) isn’t helping much.

Maybe it’s the cornfed upper midwestern accent, but Sen. Grassley expresses nothing quite so much as an extreme – if patient – bewilderment with what is happening around him.

He praises reporters for doing their jobs, when they remind him that he’d voted against Sotomayor in the past. He was all “Thank God for journalists like you,” because he just didn’t remember that.

And then there’s this weird passage that made me pull over to the side of the road. It wasn’t so much of a Driveway Moment as a complete and total WTF moment:

I like to think of a Justice of the Supreme Court being similar in their action as to the blindfold of Lady Justice over the court of the Supreme Court. She holds the scales of justice! I like to see a Supreme Court Justice who is, in a sense, blindfolded, looking over the narrow parameters of the law and the Constitution and making a decision.

…

I do think that, that more women, and, and more people of minority, are more important.

Which leads me to an important realization:

Senator Chuck Grassley and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: A match made in GOP Heaven.