Ear Of The Beholder
by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

Your Darling, Your Diva, Your One True Love despises record reviews, with their questionable statements on a topic as subjective as music. You, music fan, could love what reviewers hate and hate what reviewers love. If you took the word of some cantankerous reviewer whose wife left last week and this morning his liquor budget dried up - well, you could miss a lot. Conversely, suppose the liquor closet's full, the wife's broken in some knee pads and the reviewer's feeling overly magnanimous - hey, you could buy some of the worst crap of your music-purchasing career. Getting nervous?
 
You: Hey! Hey, with the peril!
 
Relax, my pet, and let's talk about something slightly less perilous: radio comedy. Your Stuffed Artichoke arrives at this moment with a solid comic pedigree and a trained ear. Fortunately, your ear is just fine, too. How do we know? Stand up, march to the bathroom. See you? There you are. Turn slightly to the right. There's your ear. It looks fine, right? See you? Turn to the left. How's that ear? It's fine, isn't it? Were I you, I might make with the Q-Tips, but basically it's fine. Feeling funny yet? Good. Let's chat about Cancel My Subscription, the Worst of NPR.
 
Radio comedy demands something unusual of an audience: attentive listening. In 2003, the only people who actually do this - besides those government-sanctioned charmers tapping your phone - are National Public Radio listeners, who know the Punsters as their resident sketch comics. Cancel My Subscription purports to be the life story of America's Greatest Entrepeneur Moe Moskowitz but it's a collage of NPR-type talk and song parodies, peppered with sketches and live bits. The CD starts slow and picks up speed as the benefits of skillful editing accrue. NPR personalities play along and sometimes play their own tricks. Seriously: did it ever cross your mile-wide mind that Cokie Roberts was a hoot? What's the effect of 200 Curly Howard impersonators singing a capella? Are you elated when your singing telegram is delivered by a hard core band?
 
Spoiling surprises is bad juju, so Your Marinated Mushroom wouldn't dream of it. If you're ready to really listen, you might really like listening to Cancel My Subscription, the Worst of NPR. The beauty of it is in the ear of the beholder.
 

©2003 Robin Pastorio-Newman