I can’t believe it IS butter! (sexy npr part 2)

Today’s Morning Edition featured DVD recommendations by “Eve’s Bayou” director Kasi Lemmons.

The sexy part is that she recommends “Last Tango in Paris” as a film she can watch over and over again.

The really sexy part is that she and Steve Inskeep don’t talk about that piece of cinema history in ways that indicate exactly how controversial it is. This could lead to some extremely humorous moments if naive NPR listeners (are there any?) bring that movie home knowing nothing more than what is said in the segment, such as Lemmons’ heartwarming travelogue description “It’s the music and the mood and Paris…Marlon Brando talking to his dead wife.”

Now, Dear Reader(s), I don’t know if you’ve experienced this film, but, if you have, I’ll bet the scene that’s stuck to the roof of your mind has a lot more to do with Marlon Brando talking to his very, very alive lover about, shall we say, pork products, while he, uhhhm, busies himself with a dairy product.

Or maybe Kasi and Steve just assume that all NPR listeners, upper-middlebrow(c)(tm)Airbag Moments as we are, must be familiar enough with Last Tango to not need any warning. And perhaps they are correct.

But what about the people listening to Morning Edition for the first time because they themselves are featured in the story about “a new kind of Sunday school, where families from a range of religions gather to learn about helpfulness, obedience, service and friendliness?”

What if those folks stuck around to hear the movie tips?!?!

Enjoy the film, families of many faiths! Use it as a teachable moment to instruct your kids about what helpfulness, obedience, service and friendliness meant in the seventies.

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Today’s sexy moment runner-up (for sophomores only):

Steve Kuhn’s helpfully “Now I’m awake!” opening to his story about North Korea:

“In his February 25th inauguration speech Lee Myung-bak dangled a big, fat carrot in front of North Korea.”

Putting the Zero in “Studio 360″

Weekend public radio is astonishingly hit-or-miss: the cacophonous cackles of “Car Talk“, the funereal earnestness of “Speaking of Faith“, and yes, the creepily ubiquitous harmlessness of “Prairie Home Companion“.

Surely there is no one person who enjoys every bit of programming public radio networks find to pass the Judeo-Christian Sabbaths. Of course, as I was once chastised by a local public radio reporter whose story on regional mortarless stone bridges I found so dull as to consider it a public health risk, “the great thing about radio is that if you wait long enough something you do like will come on.”

If what’s on next is PRI’s “Studio 360” I can pretty much guarantee that my wait will be at least an hour.

The show is hosted and created by Kurt “if he co-founded Spy Magazine shouldn’t he be funny?” Andersen, and his choices of topic and style of execution have a lot in common with many other tragically failed treatments for narcolepsy.

The show’s token humorist, Iris Bahr, plays the character of a flibbertigibbet British reporter named Fiona Chutney in what I have to believe is some kind of post-post-post-modern attempt to make fun of making fun of making fun of things. The humor gets hopelessly lost somewhere along the way in most of her sketches, but in today’s episode it becomes clear why.

She makes the classic mistake of trying to parody the fashion world, which is a humor black-hole so dense that not even light comedy can escape.

Think about it. What’s Sasha (Borat/Ali G) Cohen’s only consistently unfunny character? Bruno, the gay fashion world reporter. Which of Ben Stiller’s many bad movies is the worst? “Zoolander” the unhilarious send-up of that zany world we call “fashion.”

The fashion world is already a parody of itself in both unintentional and intentional ways, and parodizing parody just doesn’t work very well. It is to humor what trying to divide by zero is to math.

To make matters less pleasant she employs an accent that is an exact female version of chronic self-amuser Cash Peters of “Marketplace” and “Savvy Traveler” public radio fame.

Bahr’s personal website flaunts an impressively diverse CV that includes service in the Israeli army and Neuropsychology training at Brown, so it’s comforting to know that if she “keeps her day job” she’ll have a lot to fall back on.

Fun fact about Kurt Andersen: he has claimed that Lynne “Aww shucks me and Dick are just folks, what’s all this Darth Vader stuff?” Cheney has pursued a long term “extravagant” flirtation with an unidentified “friend” of his. “Friend”, Kurt? Really? Is it the same anonymous “friend” on whose behalf you solicited free psycho-pharmacological advice from a guest at your last cocktail party?

Whatever.

My personal advice to your “friend” would be to go for it! Join the mile high club on “Marine One”! Personally inspect the endowments of the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities! Head out on a cougar hunt with the second lady, but beware of accidental discharge…I think Dick taught her everything she knows.

Okay, I’ll stop.

To be fair, given the show’s sterling list of contributors and Andersen’s intelligence and Rolodex, I’m certain they’ve produced many great segments and will produce more in the future. I just haven’t heard any yet. (If you have, post links here!)

Sounds like a piece of, I mean on, Lynne Cheney would be a hoot…

I’m just sayin’.