When PHC started, it was a fun and fresh concept: a parody of even OLDER radios shows, like The Grand Old Opry’s Saturday night broadcast which featured live country music, comedy sketches and commercials for sponsors played by famous performers, most notable Flatt and Scruggs playing the theme for Martha White Flour (this is where Kiellor’s ‘PowderMIlk Biscuits’ comes from. This ironic and witty show was actually fresh and funny…30 years ago. Not so much now. As Homer Simpson said about it: “Radio be more funny!”
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“Best breakdown yet…” Clearly not.
This article/commentary/complete dismissal, just reeks snobbery. It reads like some valley girl wrote this.
As an fly-over country bumpkin, growing up with it, it’s charming. But you know, like, whatever.
Now, if you’re done poking fun at the midwest, you’ll have to excuse me, I going to go grab a big slice of bebopareebop rhubarb pie.
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Nothing gets the taste of shame and humiliation out of your mouth like Beboparebop Rhubarb Pie. Serve it up, nice and hot, maybe things aren’t as bad as you thought.
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holy fsm, i just read the linked article out loud to my wife and we are both teared with laughter. this is a piece of parody worthy of… garrison keillor >:)
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so as a native son of lake wobegon, you are above average?
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A Prairie Home Companion is a shining beacon in the morass that is USA radio. Witty and coupled with music that is made using talent rather than a computer. A far cry from the Adult Rock or Country that seems to fill most channels.
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Regular guests Jearlyn and Jevetta Steele might be surprised to hear that.
I started listening as an early teen and for years thought he was saying “and all the children are barbarians.” It didn’t make sense, but it was pretty funny.
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I would listen to a thousand T-Pain and Kei$ha songs before I’d willingly listen to ten minutes of Prairie Home Companion.
How does an insufferably white-staffed blog really throw the insufferably white zinger at Prairie Home Companion, anyway?
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How about Michael Feldman’s What Do Ya Know? Feldman isn’t dry, he’s just straight up unfunny. The guy can’t even set up Jim Gaffigan to be funny.
I guess attacking APHC is going to get way more attention than attacking WDYK. Ratings over content I guess.
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jedi hand wave
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I and all my siblings and all my cousins are above average.
It got real for me one Saturday afternoon when I was hanging out with my parents listening to PHC, and Garrison did a shout-out to my parents from their relatives still in Minnesota.
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I’ll have to take your word that the rest of the blog is brilliant. Seems like the guy wants to imitate a 14-year-old girl from 1989 in his distaste for old-timey radio entertainment. Just for, er, “fun,” I went back and counted, and there are, like, sixteen “likes” in that rant where “likes” don’t need to be if you’re not a 14-year-old girl from 1989. But then again, he likes to put in a “tape” when the radio gets boring, so maybe he was a 14-year-old girl in 1989 when he wrote this. God knows the Companion has been on the air long enough.
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Well, I’m glad that other people have taken care of the whole “insufferably white” thing, so I can move on to address the quality of the original subject of this post: not very. OK WE GET IT THE SHOW GOES ON LONGER THAN YOU’D LIKE IT’S TWO WHOLE HOURS AND THAT’S TOO LONG FOR YOUR TASTES BUT THEN YOU GOTTA GO AND BEAT THAT HORSE INTO INDIVIDUAL ATOMS YO DAWG WE HERD U LIKE EXAGGERATION SO WE PUT SOME EXAGGERATION ON YOUR EXAGGERATION SO U CAN EXAGGERATE WHILE U EXAGGERATE WE GET IT OK OK REALLY
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Ok, now write a piece like that about This American Life and we’ll call it even.
And, I have to say, if the PHC annual Joke Show still doesn’t make you snort out loud, then you really do have a lump of coal for a heart.
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Twenty years ago we had a Sunday morning ritual of working the Merl Reagle crossword puzzle at the kitchen island, while drinking coffee and listening to PHC on the radio. The show was hilarious then; I refuse to feel badly about having enjoyed it.
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They’re just white, not insufferably white?
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Brilliant? Hardly. A Prairie Home Companion itself and Garrison Keillor himself are occasionally brilliant and over the years I have read/heard brilliant parodies/critiques of he and the show. This was not one of them.
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The writer has a point… maybe even many points! And I agree with most of them. The Guy Noir stuff and the cowboy things are quite tedious. But the Tales from Lake Wobegon are quite moving and funny, and the critic doesn’t mention them at all. They’re worth the whole show. I’d pay money to listen to just those without the rest of the show.
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