Comments by Sue Shepherd

Comment for "Keeping Score (PBS) Season 2 Preview"

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Keeping Score

This introduction to the series "Keeping Score" not only does a great job of introducing the PBS series but works brilliantly as a stand-alone piece. In five minutes, I learned something I didn't know about the three composers, got a comparative sense of their music and what drove them, and had my interest piqued enough to want to watch the series. I hope there are more of these to come.

Comment for "episode eight of hey we're back"

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Review of episode eight of hey we're back

Jonathan Katz's animated TV series "Dr. Katz" was must-see television in my family for the six years that it aired on Comedy Central. It's one of those shows that my parents and I would discuss the next day on the telephone. Some of it has since been around on UTUBE and there is a rumor that it is just being re-released on DVD. They hold up to the test of time beautifully. The animation is spectacular and the writing and acting fresh and funny every episode.

Well, lucky for us all, Jonathan Katz is now making radio. And these skits, narrated by Mr. Katz, are just as fresh and funny as the show. In this episode he interviews his dead aunt through a medium and asks her if they can keep in touch, and then plays the sounds he hears late at night in his house and talks about what they mean to him.

This series is definitely going on my Ipod so I can hear them every week. I'm so glad Jonathan Katz has decided to do radio, and I look forward to hearing where he goes with these. The only thing I'm not sure about is the title...

Comment for "A Mom Called Paladin (3 min. version)" (deleted)

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Review of A Mom Called Paladin (3 min. version) (deleted)

This is a really lovely commentary that is amazingly nuanced while managing to kick you in the gut at the same time. It's about gun ownership, and raising kids in a dangerous world, and what to teach them. Yet it is not even remotely didactic. When I was working on a national show it was really hard to find great commentaries. I would have loved to have something like this land on my desk. If I was still in a position to air commentaries, I'd air this one in a minute.

Comment for ""How Far We've Fallen" The radical transformation from idyllic childhood to the Slap You Silly Realities of Adulthood."

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Review of "How Far We've Fallen" The radical transformation from idyllic childhood to the Slap You Silly Realities of Adulthood.

This piece juxtaposes carefree childhood with adult reality. Yeah, you're rolling your eyes. But it's not what you think: "how do you go from the warm comforting tomato soup that comes after building a snowman, to knawing on a can waiting for biopsy results..." "One moment you're diving for shiny quarters in the deep end of the public pool and the next moment you're digging under the public lint infested laundry machine for loose change to buy ramin noodles...oh how far we've fallen." There's wonderful writing in this, and read with a perfect deadpan voice, and I can hardly stand to listen to it it's so dark and sad and true.

Comment for ""Weepy The Wee Wee" Outhouse Peeing Boy Chinese Toy; the subject of Show #25 of the I Hate Poetry Poetry Hour half Hour including Global "Peesitioning" Satellite System, "Thinking Inside the Outhouse" and "Nocturnal Emission statement"

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Review of "Weepy The Wee Wee" Outhouse Peeing Boy Chinese Toy; the subject of Show #25 of the I Hate Poetry Poetry Hour half Hour including Global "Peesitioning" Satellite System, "Thinking Inside the Outhouse" and "Nocturnal Emission statement

I listened to this while trying to fall asleep one night and I felt like I had smoked something and was hallucinating (am I allowed to write that here or will the FCC come after me?) It had that kind of hypnotic, hilarious, profound effect on me, and now I am absolutely and totally in favour of having weepy the wee wee become the new American icon.

Listen to this, please, but before you do remember that this guy, is he for real with that slow midwestern deadpan voice, and the maddeningly funny and annoying sound effects? remember, he's writing for an audience of eight who is listening to his show while gutting a dear. (his words, not mine. How I wish I had written them.)

This is truly surreal radio.

Comment for "TOE/anatomy of a love story"

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Review of TOE/anatomy of a love story

This is a great way to spend a half an hour. The first piece was gripping and amazing, and I laughed all the way through the last one.
Who knew STDs could be so funny? I'm sending this link to everyone I know.