I'm an NPR Dork (among other things)

Flickr photoset of Comedy Jam weekend is here for your perusal.

After one week of regular season baseball, the Mets are 4-1 and are in first place in the National League East. The brief season, though, has not been without controversy. Jose Guillen of the Washington Nationals charged the mound after he was beaned twice in one game by Pedro Martinez. The rivalry will continue tonight when the Mets begin their first road trip of the season in our nation's capital. When the ESPN predictions came out a little over a week ago, only three of the 19 analysts have the Mets not making the playoffs at all. Nine have them taking the Wild Card, while seven have them winning the East, and three have them making it to the World Series, to ultimately be defeated by the White Sox, A's, or Angels. It has been twenty years since the Mets last were champions of baseball, in that great World Series where one grounder down the first baseline became one of the most famous plays in the history of the game. One man has recreated that moment in a video simulation of the bottom of the tenth inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series in the format of the old school 8-bit RBI Baseball game for NES. Click that link and scroll down to watch the embedded video. Whether you are a Mets, Red Sox, or even Yankees fan, you do NOT want to miss this.

During my trip to Chicago a two weeks ago, I had the privilege of going with Liz to be a part of the audience at the Chase Auditorium for a taping of one of my favorite NPR shows, Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me! The weekly news quiz is consistently smart and funny. One of the highlights each week is the "Not My Job" segment, where guest celebrities are asked questions that have nothing to do with their line of work. This week's is no exception. Sarah Silverman is fucking hilarious. But you didn't need me to tell you that. Usually, the "Not My Job" segment is charmingly awkward, but Sarah Silverman makes it hysterical and highly entertaining. She remains so sharp, it's people like her that make me wonder if I should even bother getting into comedy if there are people that have that kind of ridiculous amount of talent. Here's her appearance on the show:

MP3: National Public Radio - Not My Job: Sarah Silverman

And oh yeah, here's that great Fresh Air interview Terry Gross did with Ben Karlin. Who's Ben Karlin? I think the description on the NPR website says it best:

Come up with a list of the dream writing jobs in comedy and at least three of them are likely to come up on one man's resume: Ben Karlin is executive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and co-executive producer of The Colbert Report, both on the cable channel Comedy Central. Before that, Karlin was editor of the satirical weekly newspaper The Onion.

As long as we're on the subject (aka: me being a total NPR dork), here's a pretty good entry from the NPR blog on the future of public radio (and radio in general). Definitely worth a read. And here's a hilarious McSweeney's piece of "A Rejected Submission to NPR's This I Believe." Here's the real website for that, the series based on the original Edward R. Murrow program where people present thought-provoking essays on the things they believe. Two of my favorites are available below:

MP3: NPR - Be Cool to the Pizza Dude (Sarah Adams)
MP3: NPR - There Is No God (Penn Jillette)

One more thing - where the SHIT are Jenny Lewis and Amy Milan in this indietits comic?