Here and Now

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A recent revelation among the various NPR shows I never miss these days has been “Here and Now,” a show that I believe is distributed by American Public Media, and which is not among the best-known or best-loved NPR shows. That’s truly your loss, because “Here and Now” is not the stodgy old curmudgeon of a talker that you may assume it is. It is many things to many different people, and, according to its website, reaches five million listeners a week on 450 radio stations. To me, it is a fount of “information porn” that tickles me as I drive to and from the gym or deliver food for Postmates while I attempt to eke out a meager existence in the surprisingly hardscrabble realm that is Midtown Nashville.

When I was a book publicist, it was part of my job to book my authors onto programs like “Here and Now,” but I rarely actually listened to the shows myself. I rarely consumed any media at all, other than my own moldering iPhone playlist, only recently rejuvenated with—wait for it—cuts by Sufjan Stevens and the Noisettes, among other artists who I really should have heard of ten years ago. No, I never watched “TODAY” or “Ellen” or “Meet the Press.” Once I pitched a book that contained newly discovered slave narratives to noted battleaxe Jackie Levin at the “TODAY” show for Al Roker’s book club, only to have her respond, “Really, Gregory? For Al Roker’s Book Club FOR KIDS???” I was mortified by that error on my part, but who cares in the end? Eventually, Al Roker and Jackie Levin will be just a bunch of dust, like Madonna’s mother in “Truth or Dare”—as will we all.

But I am alive today. And “Here and Now” makes me feel young! Young again! Because surely I am younger than host Robin Young—who has been around the block, as they say—if not her younger co-host Jeremy Hobson. But also because sometimes—and I hesitate to even say this—it awakens the part of myself that I thought time had safely encased in amber. Encased, even, in reinforced amber, and of course the part of myself that I am referring to is my libido. Yes, sometimes when I am listening to “Here and Now,” it’s not just my brain that’s the active participant in the equation. Sometimes, a horridly familiar frisson of longing will coil itself up languorously from my groin, travel up my scoliotic spine, and end up in my mouth, expressing itself in a dripping rictus of desire.

Take today. After leaving the gym, I unsuspectingly turned on “Here and Now” after leaving the gym, only to hear an interview with one Mr. Pat Flanagan, who apparently likes butterflies so much he has become an expert on same, out west there in San Diego. In case you didn’t know it, butterflies are currently swarming through California on some sort of mysterious migration, the purpose of which only they themselves are privy to. From what I can gather, it has become a veritable butterfly reckoning in California, with innocent San Diegoans accidentally breathing the clouds of creatures in and choking to death, or people slipping on butterfly wings and falling to their deaths into Swan Canyon, or butterflies swooping down and stealing the beauty of Sacramento’s flora, which is rightfully humans’ to enjoy! Or whatever they’re doing.

Anyway, Pat Flanagan’s voice immediately awoke in me a great, terrifying desire. To say that he has a sexy voice would be a grave understatement, and I hope you would have empathized with me as Mr. Flanagan discussed “painted ladies,” and “inches of rain” on Valentine’s Day, and “wet weather,” amongst other things, and my body, well, responded. I was taken back to Los Angeles itself on the day last July that I started driving to Nashville, and a voice came on the air on “AirTalk With Larry Mantle” that made me want to check into a hotel and “enjoy myself” immediately. It was some expert on some topic—I don’t even remember what, now. And I know, I know, if I were to have googled the face that the voice belonged to, my desire would have immediately been quashed. But that is the secret behind NPR’s vise grip on my fantasy life. It is only a fantasy, and no one on the radio is good-looking in real life. Except in a lopsided-facial-features kind of way like Ari Shapiro, who will always be forever “filling in” for someone, ad infinitum, forever.

Today, after much meaningless banter, young Jeremy Hobson stopped trying to impress listeners with his lazily thought-out lines of questioning, and finally thanked the great Pat Flanagan for joining the show. There was a great, pregnant pause—you could almost picture listeners licking their lips in anticipation—after which Flanagan, ever the inveigler, responded in a dry, sultry voice: “THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME.”

Listen for yourself, if you don’t believe me:

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/03/18/butterflies-migration-california

You wear THOSE, shoes, I decide

Seniors like me rarely get "tuned in" to the sounds of the young, since we go to bed too early and fear the radiation that seeps from computers. But from time to time over the past decade or so, some new bands have come to my attention. I adore the Noisettes, for example, and the Silversun Pickups, and Jean on Jean, and Joan as Police Woman, although I do think her second album sounded a little rushed. (Ah, well. Again, we've all been there, album). Perhaps the most unlikely band to incur my approval, though, is the local rock combo Interpol, whom I went to see last week at Radio City Music Hall.

Interpol first showed up on my radar when I was watching the video show "NewNowNext" on LOGO. The video for "The Heinrich Manuever" came on, and I was watching it in a theatrically neutral kind of way. I thought the visuals were sort of frightfully dull - a waiter is running, a lady gets hit by a bus (but the bus seems to only be going five miles an hour, so where's the harm in that?). But then the singer, a pinched-sounding young man who sings in a kind of over-earnest way, said to the lady he was singing the song to: "you wear those shoes, I decide."

I must say, I fell a little bit in love with Interpol with that line. Imagine - a straight man who tells his lady what shoes she must wear! How silly and vaguely threatening, simultaneously. Guiltily, I began collecting their music, although because I suspected that they actually were not really "cool," I got most of their records from the library. I sort of feel weird about supporting acts that are openly derivative of other bands (like Interpol and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) even when I enjoy their music. That's the hypocrite in me, I suppose. Anyway, I laughed my head off at Interpol's cds - the cocaine imagery, the veiled threats of violence, their little suits and stuff. But I rocked out a little bit to them, too. And I decided that I would go, in all my ruined glory, to see them live.

Sadly, I quickly learned that when an old person hears of a band, it's likely that the young people have heard of that band years ago, and when Interpol played that year, it was at Madison Square Garden. I refuse to go to such a large arena! I remember some fellow I used to chum around with when I worked at MultiPlan named Justin Cherno telling me that he liked Tracy Chapman, but that he wouldn't go see her live until her popularity inevitably waned, and she was reduced to playing at the Academy. (Of course, Tracy Chapman threw a monkey-wrench into that plan with that unstoppable blues jam she dropped a few years ago. And there isn't even an Academy anymore, alack).

Long story short, years passed, and Interpol finally toured again, and I snapped up one ticket to see them. This is a picture of them, but I took it with my crappy Blackberry, so it's inscrutable. I was afraid that I would be wading through hipsters at Radio City Music Hall, but it appears that the hipsters have moved on from Interpol. When a band is kewl, but their fans are no longer kewl, it seems to indicate that a break up is coming, so I am glad that I attended the Interpol show, as it may very well turn out to be their last. And whom have the hipsters moved on to? I'll let you know in approx. five years.