Monday, December 08, 2003
7:21 PM: Having referred to "A Prairie Home Companion" at some length in class today, I’m looking for a Garrison Keillor homily to send the seminar. I searched \d2 for "Keillor" mentions. There were lots, as my fascination with this man's work started with a Lake Calhoun bandstand performance in the '70s.
Memex-building. I found my way from the \d2 search to my 1985 diary, now linked to my home bookmarks page.
8:22 PM: Let’s memex PHC, November 23, 1985 (with its predecessor the oldest show included, and the only one from the 1980s), and share it with P311. PHC were at the Claremont Colleges that November, and Willie Nelson was a visitor. He sounds tinny, singing “Hello, Walls” amidst Keillor’s opening “Hello, Love.?
9:01 PM: This is a fabulous show! It has the “Sometimes I wonder if I made it up” leitmotiv, the wonderful satire of Minnesota family holiday dinner discourse, and the post-Thanksgiving stomach sickness, the tomato juice, the turkey ala king, the Pepto Bismol maneuver, all leading to Senator Kay Torvaldson's Thanksgiving introduction of his lady love.
And finally, it’s Keillor’s love this has all been about, for the Danish exchange student.
“I hope she’s not a story I made up. ...
.. and I was going for the Psalms, friend; honest I was; but I found the Song of Solomon."
And from 12 June, 1987, after the “Last Show”:
8:07 AM: Ronnie calling to Gorbie to join him at, "tear down," the Berlin Wall. What a self-serving issue to throw at the Soviets -- and how marvelous if they took it up.
8:60 AM: Re last Saturday's Prairie Home Companion: People remembered things Keillor denied he'd done/said. So the show has taken on, for the time being, an existence of its own just as Keillor always knew it would. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Gary Keillor.
Keillor's adolescent free verse, played as part of the MPR retrospective: that's an imago he re-entered through the program.
Keillor’s monologue in this November 23, 1985, show (how young some of us were then!) will be the subject of my next memex entry. The "It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebogone" monologue starts at 1:06:45.
What a fine archaeology, Doug. I missed a lot of PHC in the 80s, and I suspect (but haven't done the research to confirm) his numbers weren't as high (I remember seeing endless stacks of his book in used bookshops, unsold). It's breathtaking, yet familiar, to listen to his Cold War commentary during the war on terror.
Posted by: Bryan Alexander | December 17, 2003 at 09:24 AM