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- Short List - "I'm Away"
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- Jen Nathan
Have you ever looked down and laughed at the incongruity of your to-do list? Write about 19th century architecture, pick up turkey, paint toenails, etc. Transom.org has taken this one step further with their Short Lists.
The concept is simple: make a list of something in your life. It can be anything - the contents of your closet, places you've eaten hot dogs, whatever. The only rule is that you can't tell us what the list is about until the very end. Try to guess this one. I'll give you a hint: If you've lived in the 21st century, you've definitely received one of these.
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Spend a snowy afternoon in Portland, Maine
The Bible and a Gallon of Bleach
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Religion and politics are two topics your mother told you never to talk about in public - unless you're a customer at Father Peter's laundromat in Portland, Maine.
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Piece Description
Have you ever looked down and laughed at the incongruity of your to-do list? Write about 19th century architecture, pick up turkey, paint toenails, etc. Transom.org has taken this one step further with their Short Lists. The concept is simple: make a list of something in your life. It can be anything - the contents of your closet, places you've eaten hot dogs, whatever. The only rule is that you can't tell us what the list is about until the very end. Try to guess this one. I'll give you a hint: If you've lived in the 21st century, you've definitely received one of these.
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James Reiss
Posted on February 23, 2008 at 11:03 AM | Permalink
Review of Short List - "I'm Away"
Compared to "A Square Meal Regardless," a rich, emotionally wrenching piece Jen Nathan put together for the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies earlier in February, this interstitial is a jeu d'esprit designed to be heard once and once only.
Even when she's not at her memorable, ponderable best, in this piece Nathan is almost as clever and satirical as a jokester MC for Hollywood's Academy Awards. The very idea of her tidbit, a compilation of auto-reply messages left on various answering machines during the absence of various phone owners -- may they be forever nameless -- the very idea of Nathan's piece is noteworthy, creative to the max.
Listen up, friends -- whaddya got to lose? sixty-three seconds? -- and take in an earful of voice-mail personalities, an audio PowerPoint show hinting at the full gamut of social classes in America today: "Please call Tony in my absence. . . . I am cruisin'. . . .Please engage Eric for service-sales opportunities." Et cetera.
I want to mention two problems I had with this piece:
1. Right after "Please engage Eric for service-sales opportunities," I stumbled over a single word, the third word, which appears to be the verb in the sentence, "Related matters _____ general escalation point." I hate to sweat the small stuff, but in too many public radio pieces I've stumbled over too many individual words and had to replay them half-a-dozen or a dozen times without understanding them. I'd like to make a plea: indie producers of the world, gimme a break! One garbled word can bring down the best radio piece on the planet. No matter what accent or dialect you use, please avoid "wah-wah verbiage," i.e. incomprehensible speech sounds.
2. Why is this piece linked to Presidents' Day? Why not broaden its scope (and possibilities for being licensed year-round) by re-fashioning it as a vox pop piece (though there are only two speakers here) spoken by auto-reply message mongerers away from their phones on any holiday, for any reason? Several plots could thicken wonderfully if the speakers subtly alluded to the real, perhaps naughty, reasons for their being away from their desks.