A modest proposal to head off the next one It’s a dangerous time, when families gather for Thanksgiving and pass the deadly virus from the young to the elderly and kill them off. This will be very hard on the Republican Party. Gamma and Gampy in South Dakota think the communistic Bidenists are the threat but actually it’s Oliver and Olivia home from the U. The kids see COVID as inapplicable to them, like dementia or hair loss, and return to the farm to cough on the cranberries and kill off Elmer and Gertrude. A generation, wiped out. By 2032, South Dakota’s two senators may be 30-year-old artisanal Democrats.
These are, as evangelicals keep pointing out, the Last Days. Forest fires, hurricanes, over-regulation, the closure of churches, face mask requirements, everything points toward apocalypse. But what if the world does not end? Somebody has to fix the highways, send out the Social Security checks, distribute the vaccine. Competence is required.
Back in the sixth grade some boys campaigned for a dog to be class president. We were just discovering our sense of irony and wanted to exercise it. And then in 2016, it actually happened and there he was on the inaugural platform, a big woofer who didn’t know the NSA from the NIH from the end of a broom handle, and the Clintons and Obamas and Bidens were all shaking hands with the goofus and he was counting the crowd and wondering why he wasn’t getting a bigger cut of souvenir sales. Read the rest of the column >>> |
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This week on A Prairie Home Companion This week's classic A Prairie Home Companion broadcast travels brings us back to 1997 with a show from the Medinah Temple in Chicago, Illinois, with Mavis Staples, Studs Terkel, John Williams, Martin Hayes, and Dennis Cahill, our own Royal Academy of Radio Actors including Fred Newman, plus the house band led by Richard Dworsky, and of course, the latest news from your favorite small town. Every Saturday, a classic broadcast from the archives is featured on our Facebook fan page and on the website home page for your listening pleasure. The link to the show is posted at 5 pm CT but can be accessed anytime. Follow our Facebook fan page >>>
Visit our website >>>
Browse the archive >>>
Gratitude, Gravy & Garrison
As a bonus for Thanksgiving tomorrow, gather your family around the computer and listen to a broadcast of "Gratitude, Gravy & Garrison," VocalEssence's celebration of all things Thanksgiving. Keillor performs a monologue and contributes comic new lyrics to familiar songs and hymns.
Have a great Thanksgiving! Be safe. Listen to the program >>> |
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In his own voice What better way to enjoy America's Favorite Storyteller than to hear the stories from Garrison himself! Many fans have grown accustomed to listening to Garrison's voice from 40-plus years on the radio, and so this summer and fall, we got Garrison into a studio to record both of his new books. Each book is available in CD format from our store, as well as in streaming/download format from our partners.
More about Garrison's memoir: In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures.
He says, "I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That's the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I'm heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day."
More about the new Lake Wobegon book: Listen to many interweaving stories of what happens when the residents of Lake Wobegon eat some bad cheese, which causes them to lose all social inhibitions and say or do anything quite a lot of unexpected things in this quiet town! Get the CDs:
That Time of Year >>>
The Lake Wobegon Virus >>> |
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Each of the monologues on this CD set is culled from episodes of A Prairie Home Companion that aired between 2014 and 2016. As an added bonus, liner notes contain a poem for each month written by Garrison Keillor.
Here is the poem "November" from the liner notes:
"How is your bookstore doing?" people ask, and I say,
"Holding its own." And they smile and say, Great.
A bookstore is like an old father. If he has a nice day,
Goes for a walk: fine. It's enough to perambulate.
No need to run a six-minute mile.
A bookstore is for people who love books and need
To touch them, open them, browse for a while,
And find some common good––that's why we read.
Readers and writers are two sides of the same gold coin.
You write and I read and in that moment I find
A union more perfect than any club I could join:
The simple intimacy of being one mind.
Here in a book-filled sun-lit room below the street,
Strangers––some living, some dead––are hoping to meet.
Purchase the CD collection >>> |
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| Just when you thought it couldn't get any funnier... This edition of the Pretty Good Joke Book includes all the puns, one-liners, knock-knocks, and knee-slappers of its predecessors, plus dozens more. Includes every joke (yes, even the groaners) from all of the almost-annual fan favorite show, plus many not in the broadcasts. With an introduction by Garrison Keillor on the importance of humor and how to tell a joke.
Here are a few one-liners from the 'Professionally Speaking' section:
How does a guitar player make a million dollars?
He starts out with seven million.
Why do bagpipers always walk when they play?
To get away from the noise.
How do you know you have a singer at your front door?
Can't find the key; doesn't know when to come in.
What's an accountant's idea of trashing his hotel room?
Refusing to fill out the guest comment card. Get the book >>>
Get the audio CDs >>>
Get both as s set >>> |
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