I'll buy lunch, you fly the plane We old Anglo guys have a bad habit of grabbing the check after lunch and I realize it’s a macho power move, dismissive, marginalizing, elitist, sexist, oppressive, colonialist, and a number of women have told me over the years, “You shouldn’t have done that,” but I notice, now that I’m old and slow and not so grabby, that they don’t reach for the check and it sits there in plain sight for several minutes before Anglo Man picks it up, when perhaps a woman says, “Won’t you let me contribute something?” and I say, “It’s my pleasure,” which they take to mean, No. End of story.
Go to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack to read the rest of THE COLUMN >>>
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This week on "A Prairie Home Companion" Spread the Christmas cheer — this classic PHC is full of tinsel and ornaments you will fondly recall for years to come. This week, we revisit a show from 1999 featuring Tom Brokaw, the Klezmatics, Chee-Yun, and the full acting company plus our house band. The show will put you in a festive place and get you ready to face the season! ”The 12 Days of Christmas,” complete with sound effects, is the stunning centerpiece and one sketch that you will want to revisit year after year. Join us Saturday for some delightful festivity! Listen via our Facebook page at 5 p.m. CT (or click the link below). Listen to the Show >>>Like our Facebook page >>>
More about this week’s featured guests:
Early in his career, Tom Brokaw worked Iowa and Nebraska, before moving in 1965 to Atlanta, where he anchored the news on WSB-TV. He joined NBC News the following year. An acclaimed political reporter, he served as NBC’s White House correspondent from 1973 to 1976. He anchored NBC’s Today from 1976 to 1981, and was the anchor of the weekday NBC Nightly News as well as The Brokaw Report (1992–93), a series of primetime specials that examined critical issues facing the nation. In addition to his career in broadcasting, Brokaw has written articles, essays, and commentary for publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. He is the author of a number of books, including The Greatest Generation and, more recently, The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate. In addition to many other honors, Tom Brokaw is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, three Peabody Awards, and seven Emmys.
An Evening with Tom Brokaw >>>View available books >>>
Time Out New York wrote: “The Klezmatics aren’t just the best band in the klezmer vanguard; on a good night, they can rank among the greatest bands on the planet.” The Grammy-winning group began playing Jewish roots music in 1986, concocting klezmer in arrangements and compositions that combine Jewish identity and mysticism with a contemporary zeitgeist and a post-modern aesthetic. Since their first recording, 1989’s Shvagyn = Toyt (Yiddish for “Silence = Death”), they have released a stack of their own albums in addition to collaborating with a wide range of other artists, including Itzhak Perlman, Ben Folds Five, Israeli singer Chava Alberstein, choreographer Twyla Tharp, and members of the Flying Karamazov Brothers. For this Prairie Home performance, the Klezmatics are: Alicia Svigals (violin), Lorin Sklamberg (accordion/vocals), Paul Morrissett (bass/tsimbl), Frank London (trumpet/keyboards), David Licht (drums), and Matt Darriau (clarinet/saxophone).
“Spin, Dreydl, Spin” >>>View available music >>>
Chee-Yun made her first performance at the age of eight, after winning the grand prize in the Korean Times Competition in Seoul. At 13, she moved to the United States to study under renowned teacher Dorothy DeLay at The Juilliard School of Music. Within the year, she had made her Lincoln Center debut in a New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concert, and in 1985, she appeared as a soloist at The Kennedy Center for the Arts and at Carnegie Hall with the New York String Orchestra under Alexander Schneider. In 1993, she returned to Korea to receive the “Nan Pa” award, that country’s highest musical honor. Later that year, she was invited by President Clinton to perform at the White House for a National Medal for the Arts ceremony honoring Arthur Miller and Cab Calloway. She continues to perform with some of the world’s foremost conductors and orchestras, as well as in recitals in major cities worldwide. Recent recordings include Chee-Yun's Sentimental Memories.
“On Christmas Day” >>>View available music >>>
Here is the text for “The 12 Days of Christmas”:
On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
FIVE ONION RINGS
Four calling cards
Three french fries
Two dirty gloves
And the Partridge Family CD.
On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Six geezers playing
FIVE ONION RINGS
Four calling cards
Three french fries
Two dirty gloves
And the Partridge Family CD.
On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Seven Swanson dinners
Six geezers playing
FIVE ONION RINGS
Four calling cards
Three french fries
Two dirty gloves
And the Partridge Family CD.
On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Eight maids a-baking
Seven Swanson dinners
Six geezers playing
FIVE ONION RINGS
Four calling cards
Three french fries
Two dirty gloves
And the Partridge Family CD.
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
A twelve-minute drum break (DRUMS)
Eleven plumbers piping (SFX CLANKING)
Ten boring people (SFX MONOTONE)
Nine ladies yawning (SFX)
Eight maids a-baking (FEMALE VOICES)
Seven Swanson dinners (BELCH)
Six geezers playing (SFX)
FIVE ONION RINGS (FIVE DINGS)
Four calling cards (PHONE BEEPS)
Three french fries (SQUISH)
Two dirty gloves (DISGUST)
And the Partridge Family CD.
(c) 1999 by Dan Fiorella |
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Guy Noir It’s a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but high above the mean streets, a light burns on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, where Guy Noir — hard-boiled, world-weary, yet surprisingly articulate — is trying to find the answers to life’s questions. In his big swivel chair under the bare bulb beside the beat-up gray file cabinet, he awaits the call of his clientele: the disappointed, the paranoid, the embittered, the rejected — and the hilarious.
Garrison Keillor’s private eye spoof thrilled audiences every week for over twenty years on live public radio broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion. Thirty-six all-time favorite Guy Noir episodes are available in one collection. Follow the intrepid detective as he solves cases no other gumshoe would touch, and enjoy Keillor’s intelligent — but always funny — spin on the classic detective genre.
Featuring Garrison Keillor, Sue Scott, Tim Russell, Fred Newman, Tom Keith, Walter Bobbie, and special guests, with music by Richard Dworsky. Listen to a sample >>>
Get the Best of Guy Noir Collector’s Edition >>> |
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Our "guaranteed-by-Christmas" ordering deadlines have passed, but we will still do our best to ship items as fast as we can!
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The Lake Wobegon Virus Softcover |
Now in paperback. Bestselling author and humorist Garrison Keillor returns to one of America’s most beloved mythical towns — a town beset by a contagion of alarming candor.
A mysterious virus has infiltrated the good people of Lake Wobegon, transmitted via unpasteurized cheese made by a Norwegian bachelor farmer, the effect of which is episodic loss of social inhibition. Mayor Alice, Father Wilmer, Pastor Liz, the Bunsens and Krebsbachs, formerly taciturn elders, burst into political rants, inappropriate confessions, and rhapsodic proclamations, while their teenagers watch in amazement. Meanwhile, a wealthy outsider is buying up farmland for a Keep America Truckin’ motorway and amusement park, estimated to draw 2.2 million visitors a year. Clint Bunsen and Elena the hometown epidemiologist to the rescue, with a Fourth of July Living Flag and sweet corn feast for a finale. |
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| A Prairie Home Companion RED SOCKS |
| Peter Rosen once produced a documentary about Garrison Keillor titled The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes. What the title failed to realize is that Garrison not only wore red shoes onstage for the APHC shows, but he also wore a red tie and red socks to match. Now, you can wear a pair of Prairie Home socks and keep your feet warm on those cool winter nights. Knit jacquard socks are made with a woven imprint combining both the original logo and the microphone from the more recent logo. One size fits all. |
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| A Year in Lake Wobegon “What I quickly came to appreciate was the universal truth in Garrison Keillor’s rich vein of stories. That they are set in Lake Wobegon is not incidental, neither is it absolutely necessary. Those truths, after all, are played out in the Lake Wobegons of our own experience wherever they may occur — whether in prairie hamlets, Sun Belt suburbs, or big-city neighborhoods.” —Tom Brokaw
Family gatherings, holiday celebrations, the predictable, the unexpected — a lot goes on over the course of a year, even in a small town. This collection gathers together 12 “above average” Lake Wobegon stories from live A Prairie Home Companion broadcasts to demonstrate that much can happen in “the little town that time forgot and the decades could not improve.” Get the CDs >>> |
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