The absolute last time I'll talk about being on Public Radio

Unless, of course, I am again in which case trust that I'll blather on about it for a few weeks again.

I got a nice thank you letter from the producer of The Dinner Party Download, saying that the (edited) dinner party submissions were on their blog.

Here is the blog link.

And here is my submission which they actually printed in its entirety with some editor's asides and format tidying:

Vanessa McDaniel in Columbus, OH needs a bigger table for:
1.) John Steinbeck - My favorite author. I want to sit next to him and absorb some of his love for humankind.
2.) Liza Minnelli - An old school broad with a great sense of humor who could prevent any awkward silences.
3.) Paul McCartney - My chance to meet a Beatle, are you kidding? If I ever actually met him, I would probably cry and kill the party though.
4.) Caravaggio - He was a genius artist plus he had the balls to do a self portrait of himself as the severed head of Goliath. I just hope he doesn’t stab anyone.
5.) Idris Elba - He’s fascinating. Plus I just want to stare at him.
6.) Ed Ricketts - I can’t invite Steinbeck without his close friend and inspiration, Ed Ricketts. They’d be so happy to be reunited.
7.) Werner Herzog - I could listen to his Teutonic monologues forever.
8.) Stan Lee - My inner comic geek demands this.
9.) Brigitte Nielson - She just seems cool to me plus I’ve loved her since Red Sonja.
10.) Pepa - It’s Pepa.
Is this too many? [Answer: NEVER!] I have some more for dinner party #2: Ru Paul, Marc Chagall, Richard Dawkins, Jim Henson, Dolly Parton, Quentin Tarantino, Jack Kirby, Juliette Binoche, Alain Resnais, Joni Mitchell, Anatole France, Jill Clayburgh, Judy Blume, Gabriel Byrne, Lee Krasner.

Bryan thought it was funny I invited Ed Ricketts just to make John Steinbeck happy. Maybe I should have said instead that he was a pioneer of marine ecology, an outstanding drinking buddy and a muse to great writers.

Underwhelming adventures but awesome conversations

Speaking to my boss is almost always entertaining, as you'll see below. For the purposes of vague anonymity, I'll call him Gary.

He was telling me this morning about his weekend, which involved going to some ice cream place where he took his picture. He was showing me the patron pictures on their website so I asked, "So, your picture is on the website?"

"No, why would it be on the website?" Gary said.

Ok? So basically he had a picture of himself at the ice cream place? No. It was a picture of his motorcycle parked in front of it. He wasn't even in it. None of this is that funny except it took several minutes to figure out that he basically took a picture of his motorcycle and had ice cream this weekend.

So I mentioned I was on NPR on Friday (I am a huge dork about these things. I was once filmed jumping rope in a boxing class at my old gym for the local news when they did a story about bootcamp classes. I taped that segment and pretty much everyone I knew at that time was forced to watch the tape until my co-workers made fun of me for jumping with my mouth open and I got self conscious.)

This conversation followed:

Gary: MPR?
(he then starts to type "MPR Vanessa" in his Google bar)
Me: NPR, Gary. Like the radio?
Gary: I don't listen to that. It's not MPR?
(He keeps trying to type "MPR Vanessa" so I was like, forget it I'll send you the link. I explained what the show was about)
Gary: Who did you invite?
Me: John Steinbeck, Werner Herzog, Pepa.
Gary: Pepa?
Me: Like Salt N Pepa? Caravaggio.
Gary: Who the hell is that?

Me: A 17th century paint...oh nevermind. Stan Lee
Gary: Stanley who? That sounds boring. Your party would suck.
Me: Please.Who would you invite? Sonny Barger?
Gary: Porn stars
Me: Like Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson?
Gary: You know their names?
Me: You don't? You're the one what watches it.
Gary: Yeah but I don't know their names. Doesn't that bother you?
Me: In fact, yes. I guess you fast forward through the credits. So your list would just be "Three random porn stars?"

He did listen to the show though which was very nice of him. He's really a nice guy. That conversation was so awesome though I wish I could have taped that and put it on the radio. My friend JB was cracking up and was like, "I must Google 'MPR Vanessa' now." It actually linked to a story on Minnesota Public Radio so Gary was closer than we knew.

Slightly underwhelming adventures in public radio

I am a big fan of podcasts. One of the shows I listen to is American Public Media's The Dinner Party Download. Last week they mentioned they were going to have a special web article for their 100th episode and solicited listeners to log on and name their dream dinner party guests, alive or dead.

Well, that's a snap right? You're probably making your list right now. Anyways, done and done. I logged on and made a vast, rambling list that included Paul McCartney, Idris Elba, Caravaggio, Pepa, and Brigitte Nielson (I was torn between her and Sandahl Bergman-I was a big fan of 80's movies with sword-wielding bitches.)

I was not expecting to receive this email from the show's producer, Jackson Musker:

Hi Vanessa, 
 
 
. 
Thanks a ton for sharing this amazing guest list (actually TWO lists!) 
Werner Herzog and Pepa together...I love it.  My hosts and I have had so 
much fun reading all of these responses (ranging from Harry Potter to 
Dolly Parton to Jesus of Nazareth to RuPaul!) that we started to think 
it'd be great if we could include fun little vignettes of these guest 
ideas on our radio show...not just on the website. Since your reply was 
one of the stand-outs, I'd love to call you sometime tomorrow and chat 
for just a couple minutes about your picks, if you're game.  I'd tape a 
brief part of the conversation - maybe 30 seconds - and then we'd air it 
on this Friday's show.  (I'll be on the line with you, guiding you 
along.  And it's taped, not live, so we can tape til we get a good cut. 
:-)) We're hoping that 5 or so of the best responses can be part of the 
on-air show. 
 
 
 
Please let me know if this sounds okay to you...and if so, what time 
tomorrow you'd like me to call you for the super quick chat.  Maybe 
sometime in the morning Pacific Time?  (I'm in Los Angeles.)

RuPaul and Dolly were indeed on my list. Jesus was.....not. Anyways, sure I said.

I was told to narrow it down to two favorite guests, so I did. The co-host Rico called and interviewed me the next day. Despite trying to mentally prepare, I got all sweaty palmed. First, let me say it's perhaps not apparent from the show but that guy has a future as a phone sex operator if he ever wants to change careers. From his throaty, "Well, hello Vanessa in Ohio!" I was weak kneed. Plus it was weird to talk to the guy when I listen every week. Then I started worrying how to condense what I was going to say into something brief and brilliant and informative and awesome. And my voice-wait, was I talking too high-pitched? Is my Kentucky accent leaking out and coating the audio like Karo syrup? You also can't tell from listening but they do several takes that go like this:

Rico: "Ok, say your name and where you are and how often you listen."
Me: "My name is Vanessa and I'm from Columbus."
Rico: "And when you listen."
Me: "Shit. Oops, can you edit that? 'My name is Vanessa and I'm in Columb-'"
Rico: "Oh, hang on. Let me check the record level again. Ok, go."


And so on. So by the time I finally got comfortable with the whole process, he had to hang up and I wasn't really sure there was anything usable on that tape although we did talk a few minutes about how Liza Minnelli and Werner Herzog would get along and how he was a big Herzog fan and was going to go to a screening in a few weeks of "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" that Werner was hosting (!) whilst "Hey, I Think I Love You" played in my head.

Amazingly, I did make it onto the show for about 30 seconds like Jackson predicted with two other listeners. It's a little over 10 minutes in, should you be inclined to listen. It really is a cool weekly show, regardless of my one-time cameo:

http://www.publicradio.org/columns/dinnerpartydownload/2011/06/episode-100-randy-newman.html

The fears of my sounding too high-pitched and squeaky were unfounded. Instead, I'm speaking in a lovely baritone that would make Tom Waits sound prissy.