another npr note

First of all, for the next few days, you can listen to the NPR piece Eve and I did until Thursday. I think you can download the whole show, which I recommend. Listening to it is much better than reading it because there are things liiiike music and other delights. This must always be the case, which must be incredibly obvious to people in radio:

Weekendamerica.org

They did some great interviews with people at the top of the show and talked about David Foster Wallace’s cruise ship piece—there’s a link to a pdf of it at the bottom.

Although here is a insightful delightful excerpt. True for cruise ships, true for LA, where “you are amazing” means “I have to go” or “please go away” or “can we talk about me for a second” (jaded):

An ad that pretends to be art is-at absolute best-like somebody who smiles at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's insidious is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real substance, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. it causes despair.